


Water Under the Bridge

by prodigalsanyo



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Animal Sacrifice, F/M, Fertility Issues, Kidnapping, M/M, Mermaid Malcolm, Mermaid Malcolm Can Do Legs or Fins, Multi, Polyamory, RIP Le Mans, True Love's Kiss, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:00:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26159902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalsanyo/pseuds/prodigalsanyo
Summary: Jackie and Gil fall in love and then they fall apart.  Worlds apart.If you only want to read the mermaid smut, go straight to the last chapter.Happy Birthday Neko Neko![Trigger warning:  Jackie's fertility issues. Jackie kills a chicken and cooks it in Chapter 1.  The kill is not graphic or gory or sadistic.  Descriptions focus on how she cooks the chicken.]
Relationships: Gil Arroyo/Jackie Arroyo, Gil Arroyo/Jackie Arroyo/Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo/Malcolm Bright
Comments: 12
Kudos: 9





	1. Jackie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missneko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missneko/gifts).



When Jackie was a young woman preparing to leave her mother's house, her great aunt had taken her to a Brooklyn pottery studio and guided her through shaping her own vessel. While most novices made vases, cups, and bowls, Jackie meditated on the number of pans which she had destroyed for her spirit infused medicinals. (Don't call them magic potions.) The clay molded into a pot. She indented lines and clouds to depict ocean spray. She drew an eye and then feathered it like a peacock's plume. Jackie etched sharp and serrated leaves crowding a twiggy stem which she later identified as rowan. A worm nipping its tail encircled the mouth of the pot (She had pictured a snake shhhhh). She had a lot of help glazing her pot into an earthy color that made her think of brick and redwoods. (It is not a cauldron.)

Her pot didn't quite take on a life of its own. It took on hers. It became tied to her abilities. Friends in abusive relationships were given handmade candles dressed with her own recipe. She mixed bath oils or floor washes when she sensed malevolent harm or lingering misfortune on a loved one. For those who were touched by the unholy, Jackie made incense or sewed up satchels and bought them time to run to an ordained priest or a trained shaman.

Whenever Jackie attempted to ignore a people problem that required alternative methods, the peacock's eye winked at her from a peripheral view, in the space between looking and seeing. She reserved special brews for her dedicated clay pot. The more she used it, the better her craft. Every time she cleansed it, Jackie curled up on the floor, cradling it like her baby, and anointed it with oils and herbs. The base of her vessel aged into the scarlet of one thousand fires. 

This thing once rolled down hardwood stairs but instead of shattering all over her coveted satin flats, it chipped in two spots, marring the beautiful glaze. One dent was three centimetres and the other was a whopping five, blinding the eye of her etched peacock feather. When she held her damaged vessel, Jackie asked why and she felt an itch to go seek out a doctor.

She had lugged the pot upstairs into the room which she and her husband hoped would become a nursery. When the doctor set her up for an ultrasound, Jackie quietly made their Toys R Us baby registry and dreamed of how she would tell him.

"Have you always had heavy menstruals?" asked the gynecologist who soon joined her in the cold patient room after the ultrasound tech finished imaging.

"No, they got heavier after I turned 29," answered Jackie, scraping off the gel with a disposable towel. 

When Jackie fully dressed, she was told that instead of their baby, the ultrasound tech located two spots.

"Intracavitary uterine fibroids. They are benign growths but can become symptomatic given their size. You have two of them," informed the gynecologist.

"Three and five centimetres," said Jackie.

"Why, yes. Do you have experience reading...?"

"Something like that," said Jackie.

Her dream of telling Gil dried up into realistic outcomes. The pot sat in ashes for almost a year after she attempted to cure her womanly issues at home. 

Six months of Lupron 3.75 mg injections to shrink the fibroids triggered menopause. She stopped bleeding, stopped living. Hot flashes, night sweats, dripping everywhere except for her vagina. Iron pills left her constipated, depriving her of one more way to release. Gil, her dummy cop husband, retreated into the realm of men and murders with the home fires burning out. Man doing, man coping, ugg ugg.

If Sergeant Gil Arroyo weren't a doggedly loyal person as befit his profession, he would've left her like any rational man whose smoking hot wife transformed into a homicidal banshee, cursed by synthesized hormones.

The Lupron turned her bones to glass, and for nothing. The fibroids expanded to the size of rotted stone fruit. She carried her pain to full term; they needed to operate. Jackie packed up her bag for a motel and left a note for Gil.

Though she paid for her lodgings in cash, Jackie had stupidly withdrawn from an ATM within walking distance from her room. She woke up to pounding on her door and a peek through the threadbare curtains confirmed an unmarked police vehicle with the telltale antenna on its ass.

"Hello, Mrs. Arroyo. I'm Det Tarmel. Before you slam the door in my face, you either come with me to the precinct or my sergeant will come knocking with a battering ram in ten minutes." Tarmel was a very tall and thick young man who seemed almost comically afraid to offend Jackie. His instincts were correct, but still.

When Jackie accompanied Tarmel to the precinct, Gil's team ended their impromptu search and resumed homicide work.

"What the hell were you thinking?!" fumed Gil, breath reeking of coffee and mints. Without his own office, he chewed her out in a meeting room with gruesome photos tacked to corkboards. No color coded yarn, though.

"I never should have said yes," said Jackie, wrecking him in one sentence.

"You mean when I asked you to marry me? Do you want an annulment?" asked Gil. Their church wouldn't let them divorce and Gil would rather die than break faith.

"Before all that," said Jackie. 

She didn't cry when her parent forfeited his visitation rights. She didn't apologize for smashing her uncle's hands for looking at her little cousins like a perv. She didn't run to anyone when her ex-boyfriend tried to slash her face like a tire. He was an older guy and she was in high school. Instead, she quit school and faked her driver's ID to make money. Some beat cop pulled her over for bad lights but then he drove her to the DMV to apply for a real license.

"I shouldn't have said yes to going out with you when we was just friends," said Jackie. When she was a hustler and he was just some beat cop.

"Do you not love me anymore?" asked Gil.

Her breath rattled, knocking out tears. The love of a good and honest man ruined her. "I do."

He nodded, satisfied with a straight answer.

"Your fingers are like ice, babe," murmured Gil. He put his sport coat around her glass bones and rubbed her brittle fists.

"I love you so much and it's not fair," said Jackie, crying out her anger. "This surgery might be what kills me for real. Most wives have to worry about their husbands, but at least they can take care of things if their man dies in the line of duty. I might not be able to do that much for you."

"Babe, I need you to catch me up. Your Dear John note to me said that the surgery is for benign tumors. Not cancer," reasoned Gil. "You were fit and healthy before the hormone therapy messed you up. You're young. Why would you think that you'll die on the table?"

"This is going to sound crazy. Because it is crazy talk," said Jackie. "I'm not going to be on this planet long enough to grow old with you. It's a feeling I get whether I'm sad or happy. My great aunt told me once that she didn't think I was long for this world."

She paused to give him time to process.

"And she also told me not to be afraid for my life," said Jackie, pressing on despite Gil bursting to argue with her. "If I had turned you down from the get go, you would be better off. I could handle it if it were just me hurting."

"When's your surgery, woman? I'll take the time off," said Gil. "You are not going to do this by yourself."

She glared at him and crossed her arms, letting his sport coat drop to the linoleum floor.

"Jackie, if you don't want me and my boys to come after you again... give me back the ring. Then I'll know we're done."

When he moved toward her, Jackie stepped sideways and punched his face. While she didn't hit him hard enough to bruise, she struck him dumb. Gil rubbed his face with a lopsided smile.

"Solid hit, Jackie. I can't feel my cheek," complimented Gil.

"Oh shoot, babe. Why'd you make me do that?!" demanded Jackie. 

"No one can make you do anything, darling," said Gil. He kissed her and it worked like a charm.

Jackie's surgery was scheduled eight weeks after she finished hormone therapy. Gil's lieutenant approved the family medical leave. Gil learned far more about the feminine mystique than he bargained for.

"After the consult and more tests, my OBGYN recommended me for laparoscopic myomectomy," said Jackie while they were in the store waiting for her prescriptions.

"Can that shit be fatal?" asked Gil. He regretted missing the consultation for work.

"I get put under anesthesia. Gas gets pumped into my gut. The doctor uses a little robot arm to get the surgery tools all up in my business," explained Jackie. She plucked up a plastic toy grabber made for kids, squeezing the handle until the green triceratops chomped its dino jaws. "Imagine that I'm the doctor holding the robot arm."

"Jackie, be serious. What's the risk?" said Gil.

"I had a really bad reaction to anesthesia when my ex nearly killed me," said Jackie. Gil flinched despite knowing why Jackie dropped out of school. "But back then, I ate a big lunch. I smoked. They cut me open after I lost too much blood. Doctor thinks that since I quit the smokes and my iron levels are good and I'll be fasting..."

The triceratops moved its plastic jaws to dispense medical wisdom. "I probably shouldn't die?"

Gil rolled his eyes, but he couldn't maintain his worry streak with the plastic triceratops smooching his cheek and complaining about beard burn in Jackie's horny dino voice. He pushed the plastic dinosaur out of his face and whispered into Jackie's ear. "And just where is the doctor sticking the robot arm?"

"I'm not getting fingered by no robot, ya nasty. The doctor cuts my stomach, but not too deep. The robot arm controls the camera and the surgery tools. That's why I won't be laid up for weeks in recovery," said Jackie. "If my fibroids were smaller, this wire loop goes up my hoo-ha and burns 'em off. I get, like, an enema in my uterus so they can see. You're a water balloon. They don't knock you out for it. You get numbed. Then the enema and the fibroids come out like when a preggo lady's water breaks. No anesthesia. No thanks."

Jackie shoved the dinosaur grabby toy into Gil's chest, smiling angelically at the abject horror dawning on a person who has witnessed man's darkest. Though Gil was forgiven for missing the consultation regarding Jackie's options, he did not go unpunished.

"Babe, you're amazing and strong and I love you," said Gil. "I don't tell you enough."

They frolicked like bunnies when Jackie's premature menopause was over. Jackie wouldn't get off his dick. Rather than rub his cock raw, Gil bought novelty toys which made Jackie's legs give out before squirting. She took more days off work to lie around and make herself orgasm until sundown. God bless mental health days. 

Gil enjoyed coming home again, feeling like the world's best lover from rolling on top of Jackie and humping away. He could thrust with zero finesse and get porntastic wailing that fattened his cock. Jackie once more learned to appreciate herself, taking her cues from Gil's lustful touches and how he called her from work on late nights to listen to her get off. She slathered cocoa butter into her thirsty skin like a fragrant siren with hair curled by sweaty orgasms and perpetually turned on by the press of her thighs. Even when walking in a park and sucking down a meaty burrito.

Getting her body into natural cycles wasn't like going into heat so much as waking up to afterglow. A few times when she went to sleep with a dildo buried inside her, Gil would twist it in deeper than she could go and eat her up like he hadn't spent all night pacing around his subordinates to get their cases out of the red before their budget quarter ended.

He learned to shampoo and oil his goatee every day with Jackie's scent soaking his hairs more often than not. Gil used a good, musky cologne to keep their play time discreet.

The guys at work didn't take it too personally when Gil cracked the whip, knowing that Gil was slave driving them in preparation of his personal life pitching backwards into hell. Gil eased up when they made acceptable percentages and then he fucked off for a week to care for his wife.

Gil drove Jackie to the outpatient surgical center. He stayed with her and took her mind off how thirsty and hungry she was. How funny she smelled from the antiseptic wipes. He stroked her hair from her wan eyes, told her how gorgeous it looked when curled around his fingers. Meaning when they made love for hours. When he aggressively worked her over and over until she was doused in her own juices. Usually when he arrested the latest scumbag and his pent up needs caught up to him.

Jackie smirked at Gil. "I shouldn't have milked you last night."

"I didn't put anything in your pie hole last night, no matter how much you begged. Nothing in the directions said 'don't screw,'" retorted Gil. He resumed patting her hair, conveying through touch what he couldn't in words. She could tell when he's thinking about pulling her hair. He wanted to feel in control which is laughable with a force of nature like Jackie.

"My mom says that she has no idea where I got my hair from. Everyone in my family has pin straight brownish blond hair and blue eyes. But me, I'm the literal black sheep," said Jackie. "My hair is wavy and black. I'm pasty compared to them."

"You're my brown-eyed girl," said Gil.

"Don't."

Gil ignored her. "Sha la la la..." 

"I swear to God, Gil! If I get that song stuck in my head when I go under," threatened Jackie.

"I'll graciously accept my ass kicking when you wake up," said Gil. He took out his phone and hesitated. "Do you want me to call your family during or after, babe?"

"Call them if and only if something happens," said Jackie. "No, listen, my mom will kick off the storm of the century even when the surgery goes exactly the way it should. I'd rather she flip her shit when there's reason to."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why? It's my mom. She's going to overreact. That's just how it's been." Jackie pulled at the neck of her hospital gown. She then put on the stretchy disposable cap which poofed from her untied hair.

Gil helped her tuck in stubborn strands.

"Were things always like this between you and your mom? To the point where you couldn't tell her that you needed surgery? How bad is it, kid?" asked Gil.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I was accidentally kidnapped?"

"How the hell do you get accidentally kidnapped?" responded Gil.

"Family vacation. My aunts and uncles took us kids to a state park. I was 8 or 9. I heard kids playing in the trees and I went and looked. By the time they found me, I was gone for seventy two hours," said Jackie. 

"Jackie, that was really dumb," said Gil.

"I wasn't even lost. I played around and made friends. They gave me fruit and honey mixed with leafy greens. They had warm milk too and that made me too sleepy to play. I don't remember the sun going up or down. It was nuts."

"I would've killed you once I knew you were okay," said Gil. "I couldn't lose you, babe."

"You're not going to come after me every time," said Jackie.

"Not always, but I do try to take care of you twice before Fridays," said Gil.

"You take real good care of me," said Jackie. Gil was a generous lover.

The surgical team wheeled her away like a ton of baggage. She wheezed into the gas mask before plummeting into a sudden and cold drop.

Jackie was drowning. A large black spot stained her palm, reddening as a chilling gust swept water over her head. She stuck out a hand to fight the current, but it wasn't her hand. The palm was too long and wide and the wrist thicker than her own. A silver watch with a golden stripe winked at her before she was cast into the depths.

When she surfaced, Jackie spat up foul water in her hospital bed. She was relieved to come back to Gil and she clung to him like the rock in a storm.

Jackie didn't die on the table, but the anesthesiologist had one hell of a time waking her up. The hospital admitted her into care and observed her. She looked great despite her coma and the residents called her sleeping beauty.

Jackie hated it when Gil replaced his wristwatch with an upgrade. He picked a platinum watch with golden links striping the metal band. If she could sleep, she would see the stupid watch in the loathsome vision of Gil's body plunging into dirty waters. Jackie couldn't glimpse the sky nor could she catch the time on Gil's watch; no additional clues were revealed.

Helpless in face of the inevitable, Jackie turned to her dedicated clay pot. She evicted the mouse inside and scoured off the ashes stuck to rancid oil. 

Using a diamond drill bit and a wet sponge, Jackie slowly drilled a pair of holes near the two spots where the glaze was ruined. The wet sponge kept the electric drill from overheating and cracking the glazed clay. She spent a small fortune to buy two uncut emerald and ruby gemstones. Her fingers suffered from twisting copper wire around the emerald and the ruby. The wire bit her fingers as she looped more copper into the holes she drilled. Then Jackie covered the damaged peacock feather with the emerald stone. She set the ruby into the other chip mark.

A protection charm unraveled in her mind as she set her bejeweled pot to a gentle simmer on their gas stove. Jackie boiled up fresh sage and orange blossom plant leaves after she mashed the greenery and coarse pink salt with her gray stone mortar and pestle. When the solution cooled, Jackie poured it into a glass bottle with a spray nozzle on top.

She took over the kitchen with her husband Gil off to his precinct. He refused to play hooky when she begged him. Gil noticed the medicinal smell but made no comment before he left. Jackie waited for him to go before she obtained her offering from a Chinatown butcher.

The black rooster's feet scratched her chest before she snapped its neck over the kitchen sink. Jackie cradled the small but plump l'il boy and bawled tearfully into its feathers. He wasn't more than a few pounds. If she didn't love Gil, she would never have done it. She wouldn't have done it for herself. Her chest stung from a deep scratch. 

Jackie plucked the bird, rinsing the black feathers and wrapping them inside cheesecloth soaked with Florida water. She cleaned the innards with vinegar and salt and rinsed its humors down the drain. Then the cleansed organs were oven roasted with a whole root of peeled ginger, onion, garlic cloves. Jackie stuffed the roasted organs inside the bird along with sprigs of green onion and lemongrass. Twine held the bird together as she tucked its feet into the clay pot. She poured cups of water over the little dear and fired up their stove. An offering on the pyre. A flame within a circle. Spirit within a body. 

As sweet aromas floated to heaven, Jackie tidied up their house and misted the sage water in all corners of every room. Nothing was allowed to obstruct the doors or windows. She opened up the windows. She tended to her Ponderosa bonzai, a thirsty plant that weathered seasons of her life. She corralled her scattered thoughts and brought them firmly to Gil. She could envision his Le Mans behind quite a few squad cars, more than what a straightforward homicide required. When Jackie cleared every room, she sprayed herself with the sage. And then into a hot bath with more sweet oils, whole milk, honeycomb, cloves, anise, nutmeg, licorice, organic orange peels. Purified from sole to crown.

Jackie put on her best silk dress and lined her eyes. They didn't have a huge plot of land as a yard. She had asked Gil to dig a big hole for her. He did so, assuming that Jackie would plant another shrub. Her stomach remained tender though her body long since absorbed the carbon dioxide gas from her surgery. But she could plant her feet and get herself grounded on the cool grass.

She lined the fresh dirt with small but fragrant black feathers. Jackie painstakingly lowered the warm clay pot into its final resting place. Her trowel pushed clumps of soil until a small mound remained.

"This. All this for my husband's life," sobbed Jackie. "And I promise that I won't get selfish with my powers. If I don't get to have babies, if I don't get to see fifty, I won't abuse what I've got. Bring Gil back to me. Accept this as thanks. Take the goodies freely given."

She broke open a very good Scotch and poured out the whole thing, for good measure. In total, the worms would enjoy a little over one grand USD in offerings. Jackie hobbled into the house and lied down on her husband's side of the bed. Her eyes snapped open when she heard a rustle of feathers outside their window. She heard the cooing of the caitiejay, a bird whose song portended to bountiful eats and a busy nest.

The door banged loudly like shots fired. She politely opened the door despite the taste of brackish water burning her sinuses and blood aching her throat.

"Hello, Mrs. Arroyo. I'm Officer Dani Powell," said the policewoman. She was new, going by the uniform cap which she pressed to the front of her blues. "Our CO couldn't reach you on your telephone. Please come with me, ma'am."

"My husband? Was he shot?" said Jackie. She shoved her grass stained and gritty feet into her flats. They didn't go with the dress, but she didn't care.

"We don't know yet. Please come with me." The policewoman was young, black, and possibly Latin mixed going by her head full of kinked curls. She opened the front passenger door of the police cruiser for Jackie.

"Ma'am?"

"'Scuse me Officer Powell. I thought I heard my name," said Jackie. Yet when she turned to look, their yard was empty except for toadstools which sprouted around a small mound of dirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


	2. Gil

The first time Gil sees her is like magic. The babies on the block are playing Chinese fire drill around a gushing hydrant. She keeps the babies from getting clipped by cars turning the corner. She nearly causes some accidents herself, wearing her white romper with chunky glass bead necklaces dangling over her tits. But he wearing blue and she doesn't look his way. He can't be too disappointed when no one wants to talk to police.

The first time she talks to him is all business. As usual, Gil and his partner show up at a party uninvited. A gangster is shot dead and no one hears over the trap music. She wears gold earrings thicker than shortbread cookies and iced with crystal. She looks naked in a light tan bodycon dress. 

"You gotta light, Officer?" Her slim cigarette clamped between her brown lipstick. An empty book of matches sits between her acrylic nails painted like a purple galaxy.

Gil pats himself down, knowing full well he doesn't have a prayer, and shakes his head.

"You throw this out for me, papi," she says, flicking the rubbish cardboard at him. Gil grabs it before his partner obnoxiously waves the murder weapon under his nose. It's when he's in his ride fishing for quarters when he turns out his pockets and sees the cursive name. It's a man's name which Gil hands to the lead detective during witness interviews; police break the case.

"How'd you get it, Arroyo? You didn't look at nobody at that party but that one broad," gripes his partner.

"Honest police work," says Gil, stroking his goatee. He is in love, because she is into babies and cops.

When he finally sees his chance to talk to her, Gil takes it. He figures a routine stop is his best shot. Tell her about her burned out headlight and get her name before end of watch.

"Hello. License and registration, please," says Gil. If he hasn't done this one thousand times, he would've choked. Her hair is curled into twin buns. He sees what she looks like without powder that's too dark for her skin.

"You're shit out of luck. I don't have one," she says. So brazen that Gil cracks up.

"You're driving without a license? Do you know the owner of this vehicle?" says Gil.

"It's not stolen," she says.

"Let me guess. You won it over poker?" retorts Gil.

"My ex got high and stabbed me. When he skipped town, I knew where he ditched it," she says. "I bled on the dash, so it's mine."

"Miss, I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle," says Gil.

"Shoot, are you arresting me?" she says.

"You're not under arrest, but I can't let you drive around without a license. Your vehicle will get towed by an automotive business and held until you address your title issues," says Gil.

"I can't work without the car. Please, Officer, cut me a little slack," she pleads.

"Tell you what. I am going to drop you off at the DMV. Pass the exam for your permit. Then when you're ready for the driving test, you give me a call," says Gil.

"Why." She doesn't take his number.

"Are you able to borrow someone else's vehicle for the driving test?" he replies.

"I'm not. But that's not what I'm asking you. Why."

"I've seen you around the block. Take the help, Miss." He opens the rear door of his cruiser.

"It's Jackie. My pop loved the Dodgers," she says. "And who are you? I don't hop into any man's backseat without no first and last name."

He bites his tongue and his cheek before she cracks him up again. She permits him to drop her off at the DMV closest to her neighborhood.

"You do know that if your blood is in that car, it's evidence of attempted homicide," says Gil. Despite his conversational tone, her story lights a righteous fire. He's got half of an idea of what he'll do when her ex boyfriend shows up. Roaches can't help themselves.

"His blood would be in the car, too," says Jackie. "Because I tried to kill him right back."

"Am I okay to ask what you do for work?" says Gil.

"I clean houses," says Jackie. "You wouldn't believe how many of them are haunted. Makes the work go faster. Spirits gossip about the living."

Gil doesn't take the bait. He steers the conversation back to earth.

"Do you remember tipping off the police at a party in Soundview?"

"Yeah, it was you," says Jackie.

"Did you see what happened?" says Gil. He is gratified to be remembered.

"No. Dead guy was macking on me til I dropped some bad news on him," says Jackie. "He departed after you got the name."

"Are you a Miss Cleo psychic?" says Gil.

"I wish I was. She make good money lying to people," says Jackie. "Telling people what's real don't pay."

She tells him that she rents a room with strangers and pretty much hangs out where she can park the car when she's not sleeping or using her landlord's bathroom.

All too soon, he arrives at the DMV.

"You're going to kick me loose or what?" says Jackie. She drums her silver flecked blue acrylic nails on the upholstery.

Gil lets her out. He thinks that she's going to either curse at him or say thanks when she opens her mouth.

"Did you check the Classifieds today?" she says.

"No, not yet," answers Gil. He raises his brow. "Should I check my horoscope, too?"

She gives him the stink eye and enters the DMV without another word to him. Gil is so wiped that he sleeps on his couch with newsprint spread over his chest. When he skims through local ads, he finds an old Pontiac up for sale.

Gil promises a favor to his high school buddy who is also his mechanic. His buddy tows the vehicle abandoned by Jackie's ex. Gil keeps his promise to Jackie and gives over his personal vehicle for the driving test. He literally signs his car title over to her when she flashes her driver's ID. Gil basks in the knowledge of shocking her speechless.

"I don't know how you got away with zooming around in that hunk of junk," Gil says.

"I had no choice," says Jackie.

"Well, now you do. You can have something better. You could run a newspaper announcement for your ex's car and go to small claims court. Pay a lawyer to get your quiet title. Or you can take my old car which is already insured, inspected, oil changed, the whole works."

"What are you going to drive besides the paddy wagon?" asks Jackie.

He shows her his black Pontiac '67 with sweet chrome reflecting the white hot sun. "I did check the Classifieds. Not the smoothest ride on God's green earth, but she's down for moonlit drives." He stretches the bottom of his shirt to wipe a rearview mirror.

"Congratulations. Sounds like you'll be happy together," says Jackie.

He tosses up his old keys and Jackie looks up and dances back to catch it like a World Series champ.

"You dummy. What if it fell down the sewer?" she fumes. She punches him and then her breasts mash his chest in an ecstatic hug that smells like chocolate and coconut.

Whenever he sees her around, Jackie gives him a smile and two thumbs up when business is good. When her face looks too tight and he's in plain clothes, Gil offers lunch. Usually a sandwich or burger. He likes how big she stretches her mouth to grub down. In his dating experience, the more a girl minces her bites, the more likely she loses his number.

"What'sa matter with you?" he asks. He really likes her, but he's not in pursuit. The last thing Jackie needs after an abusive ex is a boyfriend who carries a gun. So he feels free to talk to her without his feelings on the table. Just burgers and fries on a greasy counter.

"So you know I clean houses, right?" says Jackie. While Gil chows down, she explains how her job isn't steady work, more like a string of gigs. She stares at him. "A lot of times, I clean up after parties."

She does more than mopping up puke and bagging empty party cups. "I'm on call the whole time for whoever hires me. The host sells to kids who want to have fun. And there's girls. When a girl gets sick, I take her. They don't care if it's into a ditch or an ER, as long as she's not at their party. When it's po po, I run a locked box to the next man. I never know what's inside and I don't ask."

Gil understands. Dealers and movers recruit pretty young things who don't stick out like old moms and aunts. But they need women who aren't hooked on dick or drugs.

"You're a very lucky lady," says Gil. "If I'm the first cop that stopped you."

She looks wrung out today, but considering how good she can make herself look after midnight, Gil respects her toughness.

"It's not luck. I light candles and I knock on wood to stay out of trouble. What else can I do besides hustle? I'm a dropout." Jackie stirs the ketchup with a burnt out fry. "I don't want to make a living with fortune telling. It would just be another hustle. When people notice that you can make things go their way, they're forever after you with their money problems and their relationship drama."

"I only do good when I make something for a friend. What's supposed to happen, happens better," says Jackie.

"What if you don't like someone who wants your help?" asks Gil.

"If I get a big itch to help them, I talk to them. Get a feel for them. I can make soap, candles, a luck charm for home or to keep in their wallet. There's one house where I use my own soap after pick-up. Floors and windows. The guy don't know what I do, but he likes having me around. He thinks I bring him customers who won't rip him off. I hate his ass but his babies from different mommas play in that house. If I didn't stick my two cents in, someone who he fucked over would nail the doors and start a fire."

She takes out a few dollars and won't take them back even when Gil pays. "I appreciate you listening to my crazy. But I think I just need to accept my life for what it is instead of whining."

"How about you try cleaning offices or shopping businesses?" says Gil. "Don't work where you live."

He touches her shoulder, feels her hair under his fingertips.

"What was the point of you getting a nice car if you don't go anywhere with it?" he asks.

When she brushes him off and stalks out of the diner, Gil thinks that it ends their tentative friendship. He doesn't hear from her or see her around and he prays that she moved and found a new line of work. He works, hangs out with his partner on their nights off, and studies to become a detective.

Then one day he hears her voice mail. He regrets not clearing the answering machine on the daily. Gil calls the pay phone number she leaves him, praying he's not too late.

"I quit!" says Jackie before he gets in a hello. "I changed my phone number so nobody can find me."

"Good for you. Did you move?"

"I live in my car for right now. I'm fine, I know where to park," says Jackie.

Gil is not fine with that. "Where the hell are you."

"I'm near my new gig. I clean motels. Pretty big job," chirps Jackie. "Listen, there's a party I want you to take me to..."

At first, he thinks that Jackie means to celebrate. He should know better. She picks him up in her lovingly used car.

"Can you be less cop for two hours?" says Jackie. "This my last party, I wanna make it a good one."

She explains to him that she wants him to arrest someone.

"I don't do drug busts," says Gil. "We need manpower for that."

"No, the smack been bought and used. Everyone's high. Whatever you find on them would be possession. You not catching no dealers," she says. "There's this sick fuck who been killing peeps. He makes them OD."

"If I do this for you, you're done with this scene, Jackie."

"Okay, Babe," she retorts.

Gil follows Jackie who sashays in a leopard print shortie. Her legs look killer. He doesn't grab her bare midriff or her exposed lower back. He doesn't like anyone else eyefucking her either. Gil puts his arm around her waist. Jackie nods at him when they hear screaming and breaking noises from a locked door. About ten minutes later, Gil calls 911, identifies himself to dispatch and provides the address.

Medics come for the victim while police take away the serial joy killer. The arrest doesn't lead to direct confession, but people who know the suspect step forward to report their own attacks. They were too scared to talk to police because they did drugs. The suspect's lawyer not only convinces him to plead guilty but also to give up the names of victims who would never talk again.

The detective who Gil helped earlier (the gunshot vic) talks to him again, this time offering a big handshake because a few suspicious deaths get filed as solved murders. Gil has a friend in Homicide, for when he applies.

Jackie leases a room over a nail salon. She's happy that it's not a food place downstairs.

"I get my own shower, my own toilet, my own sink. The stove is like an Easy Bake oven, and they didn't put in a kitchen fan, but whatevs. I live alone and the motel hired me full time so I can make rent by myself," she chatters over root beer floats. She tells him that she wants to manage people at work instead of getting hassled herself.

He sees Jackie a couple times a month, not as much when he gets a girlfriend. Gil doesn't mention it to Jackie because he's less than three weeks into the relationship. Jackie doesn't invite him inside her abode and she never takes a nightcap at his place. He only sees her in lounges and bars no later than happy hour. When the sky gets dark early, Gil walks her through a park where an old black man plays the saxophone. Longing notes hang in the cold air as Gil watches her go inside and turn on her lights upstairs.

He knows from their conversations that she's doing a little homework for her GED before sleep. 

"I'm a good girl. When I want to be," says Jackie. She wears sleeveless dresses and a cropped jacket with tassels and beads. His heart skitters when she winks her lashes and smiles.

He's thinking about it while he's sweating on top of his girlfriend. Gets annoyed when his girlfriend talks instead of going to sleep. She's not happy with him and he doesn't know what else she wants. When he can't sleep well from the guilt or resentment maybe, Gil soon breaks off the affair, lets himself get cried on. He doesn't have much left over after the job and that little bit only wants Jackie.

To celebrate his recent hire as a rookie detective, Gil asks Jackie out to a holiday light show. They will both be out late together. He doesn't couch it as a date because she would say no. Even if he's not expecting to hold hands or kiss right off the bat, she would turn him down. No one grows up wanting to marry a cop. He gets that. He really does. But he won't go down without swinging.

Jackie is crazy, maybe crazy enough to get serious about him.

When he picks her up for the light show, Jackie gives him a small gift box. He unwraps a fuzzy rabbit's foot. An herbal fragrance suffuses his Le Mans.

"You're harshing the new car smell," says Gil. He exclaims "Hey!" when she takes the pine scented air freshener hanging from his mirror, cranks down the window, and tosses it out.

"New car smell in an old dawg's wheels? Please. This is better. Let the rabbit's foot do what it's apposed to," says Jackie.

"You put your special touch on this thing?" asks Gil.

"Yeah. Trust me," she says. "You can stick it in the glove compartment if you want it out of your face."

He puts the rabbit's foot with his key. Gil's lucky streak starts when he finds premium parking space on the street, saving him a roll of quarters. They walk around the city plaza where the holiday lights flash. Gil and Jackie scope out white tents with string lights and heat lamps where artisans sell handcrafted knits or seasonal holiday edibles. 

Jackie gets cold watching the light projections of snowflakes and bells. They warm up at a nearby bar which is already too crowded. Jackie shivers in an exterior alcove just out of the chill while Gil stands with his back to passerby foot traffic. 

She cradles hot cider in both hands, warming up as Gil blocks the wind.

"Aren't you cold, Gil?" she says, smirking.

"Are you?" he retorts.

When she shakes her head, Gil contentedly freezes his balls off. 

"Then I'm good here," he says. He thumbs at the rabbit's foot hanging out of his jeans. Presses his hand on chipped paint and stops anyone from jostling her when he senses more people crowded around them.

Gil won't move for anything because it feels like just the two of them in the noise and hubbub. He doesn't kiss her then; her heart is rabbiting away and his brain tells him to wait.

When he drops her off, Jackie pecks a quick kiss on his cheek and escapes to her apartment. He idles the car after she's through the door, after she turns on her upstairs light, after he sees her silhouette pacing at the window. He can't stop smiling though he's only taking himself home.

Gil thinks about Jackie. When a shopping cart bumped by an SUV careens toward his parked Le Mans and the shopping cart tips over, wheels caught by a storm drain in the parking lot. When vandals during the public school's winter holiday gouge the paint job of every car on Shore Road, except for his. When he tails a senior detective investigating a teen found stabbed in an abandoned vehicle; her time of death is a nightmare because temperatures affect decomposition. 

Jackie doesn't return his missed call within the 48 hours when Gil is wired from hitting the case. His mistake is getting into the Le Mans to drive around and clear his head. Jackie yanks her door open, face tight like people do when Gil raps the wood like police.

"Gil?"

His eyes are raisins and a migraine squats inside his skull but he can finally blink, can think about taking headache medicine, after he sees her. 

"Is your phone working, Miss?" he snaps.

"Yeah, who wants to know?" she throws back.

"Do me a favor. When you're too busy to chat, leave me your voice mail," Gil says. "As a courtesy."

"Fine," Jackie says. 

"Good." He steps back.

"Do you want coffee before you go?" Jackie says.

"God, yes. If you have it ready. Why do you have it ready?" he asks. Then he smells it, a fresh pot. Gil toes over her threshold.

"I was feenin'," Jackie says. "Go sit on the sofa before you keel over. I'll bring you a cup."

He winks out on her sofa and wakes up to the sizzling smell of Spam, eggs, and potatoes. 

"Where's the can?" Gil mutters.

She points him to the bathroom with an eggy spatula. He shakes off his coat before he uses her toilet. Gil rinses his face and bums her mouthwash.

"Don't you work?" Gil says, city's sharpest detective.

"Second shift," she says. "Lucky a coworker needed to switch with me this week."

"Your shit works out too well for it to be luck." He chugs the glass of orange juice. 

Jackie hums and plates up brunch for them both. Gil is still hungry despite devouring a four egg omelet, half a can's worth of fried Spam, and the potatoes. But he's not shaking anymore.

Her newspaper is open and folded to the funnies section. Jackie pencils in the crossword while Gil scrapes his plate clean. She gives him coffee when he puts the plate in the sink.

Gil half considers packing up his Yankees mug and a toothbrush for the next time he shows up on her doorstep like a maniac.

"Are you working today?" she says. He watches her feet flex in her house slippers.

"I have to," Gil says. He has a teen girl thawing in the fridge. "Thanks for brunch, Jackie."

"Okay, Babe. Have a good day at work," she says. He knows that they're okay when they call each other Jackie and Babe, like World Series champs.

Gil bends down and kisses her before heading out. She's still working through Crosswords when he pulls on his coat.

He's backing into a parking spot near a yellow painted pole when he realizes what he's done. Gil belatedly recalls the salty press of his lips on hers in their first kiss. Soft, warm, slightly buttered.

"Jesus fuck!" yells Gil. The Le Mans hiccups its reverse and he dings the bright painted pole.

"What'sa matter wit yous, that you dented your ass?" asks Gil's buddy, the mechanic. His fingernail scratches the yellow stripe denting the chrome. It's like a tramp stamp on the Venus de Milo.

Gil tells him about Jackie.

"That's the chica you gave away your car to?? You know I thought you’sa a fool but you crafty. You marry the chica, the car stays in the family," jokes his buddy.

"Fuck you," says Gil.

"You might have to service me. I'm not kidding. If you weren't my pal, Gil, you couldn't afford me. I gotta send out your bumper to another company to re-do the plating. Then I can weld it for you," says the mechanic.

"Thanks, bud," says Gil. "I owe you."

"You can let me be your best man for the wedding. I'll throw a wild bachelor party. Bless a stripper with work."

"Regular strippers," stipulates Gil. "They must have boobs, real or fake. No danglers."

"We'll discuss when you make an honest woman out of her," drawls his buddy. Gil knocks his buddy's Mets ballcap to the grease stained floor of the auto garage.

"You wifed me, Detective Arroyo. I can't believe you! You fucking wifed me!! Get your stuff together before you see me again," she hisses on the phone when he finally calls her.

Gil can bring himself to face Jackie after police apprehend the lowlife who dumped that poor little girl's body in a junk car. Jackie agrees to meet him at their usual happy hour. Jackie tells him about interviewing for management in a hotel, with a GED under her belt.

After drinks, they have their second kiss when Jackie steps funny on a cobblestone walkway. Gil catches her, combs the loose hair falling over her cheek. Dating Jackie means trying different places to eat while touching hands or bumping shoes. Their talks include not only job changes but also what it would be like if Jackie lived in an apartment with walled rooms or what Gil will do when his own lease is up.

Gil doesn't look back after the ink on their joint signatures dry on their rental contract for a two bedroom apartment. Jackie brings her wardrobe, potted plants, and boxes of rocks.

The first thing Jackie unpacks is a big black monster rock. She mounts it on a lacquered wood base which barely leaves space for loose change and car keys on the little table by their shoe rack.

"This rock keeps out probs. Sometimes you put it outside under a full moon to clear it. In a pot of dirt," she explains when Gil grumbles. He installs wall hooks for their keys. Her giant peace lilies sit in the bathroom instead of his laundry hamper. An odd number of votive candles sit on a flat block of orange salt despite the small bathroom counter.

Gil's high quality pans and full sets of crockery take over their kitchen. Jackie contributes a ceramic pot that he wouldn't even touch to boil eggs.

"Oh, this not for making food in," she assures him. Her special pot, her weird spice rack, and little baby food jars of strong oils go into a separate cabinet.

Gil's furniture and shelves of books dominate their living room. Some of his books remain in storage to make room for Jackie's glassware and more rocks.

He cooks their first meal at home and pops the question with a diamond, to add to her rock collection. She says yes. And it's a yes even when their phone rings during champagne. Work calls. Jackie finishes her glass and starts on his. He gets a taste of the bubbly when she kisses him for luck.

"If you and your boys hit up a strip club, then my maid of honor will hire beefy dancers. You down with that?" says Jackie.

Gil tells his friends no strippers. He and his buddies make do in Atlantic City, giving their dollars to the slots instead while Jackie and her girls Kat, Kate, and Katie enjoy a spa day with female massage therapists only.

The morning after their wedding night, Mr. and Mrs. Arroyo regain consciousness on their sofa in their party clothes, half deaf and squinting at one another. They fell asleep after booze and dancing. Gil remembers bachata, meringue, and salsa… but they did not do the horizontal tango.

“The whole ceremony was a wash,” Gil jokes after they get in some coffee, shower, and sex. The store brand coffee tastes the same, but somehow it perks up Gil extra to see that gold ring around Jackie’s cuppa.

“Did you want the red light special?” retorts Jackie.

“If I ask nicely, will I get some?” says Gil. He pulls his wife onto his lap and bangs his knee into the lunch table.

“As someone in the hospitality industry, we’ll see what we can do, Mr. Arroyo,” says Jackie.

Gil forgets about his promised treat when he plays catch up with the honeymoon backlog. Then a nasty flu makes it rounds at the precinct. So he’s perplexed when he jumps out of the shower after work and Jackie, in her purple velour jogging suit, drags a cooler into their bedroom. It’s the cooler they use for tailgating, stocked with bottled drinks on ice. She smirks at him. “You are scheduled off. I have it on Dolores’ word that you’re not taking calls for 48 hours.”

“Damn, women tell each other everything,” says Gil. He throws his towel over the door, shifting gears to dive into bed.

“Oh no you didn’t,” says Jackie. She tells him to hang the towel on its proper rack in their bathroom.

“Yes, dear,” says Gil. He whips it on her sweet and round ass before he complies with orders from above. He does his best not to jog back in his T-shirt and boxers.

Jackie leaves the windows slightly cracked and plays a nature sounds CD she ordered from a TV commercial to shut out the streets. She dims their ceiling light and lights an odd number of candles. 

The candle light flickers as an ocean wave sweeps through their modest bedroom. He hovers at the door, noting her wardrobe change. Gil appreciates her legs underneath the purple silk robe cinched around her waist. Her hair is pinned up. He takes a good look at her neck, jaw, and face, just loving how it comes together. "Smells nice,” says Gil.

“Orange, sandalwood, and an itty bitty bit of cinnamon bark and jasmine oil,” Jackie tells him.

“I love it,” he says. He really does. He cooks, but Jackie picks up around the house more than he does. He needs to work on it to dodge the divorce couch. The niggling thoughts intrude at rapid fire as he enters the space which Jackie prepared for them.

He strips off the sleep clothes and pauses before he drops them to the floor. Instead, he dumps them into his laundry hamper. Jackie sits on their bed, her shoulder poking out of her robe. Gil kisses her skin and reaches south. Gil is more than a little flustered when she catches his hands before her robe slides off.

“Take it slow, Babe,” says Jackie. “We’re doing things different tonight.”

“Is this like one of your rituals? Is shit about to get magical?” retorts Gil. He should’ve known from the bells and whistles.

“I belong to you in body, heart, and soul. I wanna invoke our connection. Do you feel any kinda way about playing with our energies?” says Jackie. “We can just fuck if you’re not down.”

“No, I want to try,” says Gil. He doesn’t want to miss out. An ache weighs his chest at the thought of being cut off from any piece of Jackie’s love. “Is this gonna do something for us?”

“Nothing flashy, I don’t think,” says Jackie. “It’s just more of us. We’ll grow closer and pick up each other’s cues. And we’ll have fun doing it.”

“How can I say no to that?” says Gil. “I’m all yours.” Body, heart, and soul.

Gil half expects to recite Latin words or put on feathered Mardi Gras masks like a big budget Hollywood orgy scene. Instead, she tells him to breathe and focus his thoughts on their marriage and picture their happiness. Gil subtly clocks how long he has to do this; ten minutes is an eternity of fidgeting from all the errands and tasks he can finish on his time off. 

Jackie directs them to sit cross legged in the middle of their firm mattress, in a gentle and loving staring contest. He falls into a trance as their hands shift positions. At first his fingers rest on her palm while raising his other hand to shoulder level. Then Jackie holds his heart and he mirrors her, fingers splayed over the front of her robe. When she scratches the tip of her own nose, the itch on his face goes away. When Jackie breaks eye contact with him, her eyes watering, Gil’s hand dips under the robe and presses the scar from her crummy ex.

“I get it now, babe. Why you needed to do this. You’re thinking I might hurt you and dump you like the last guy you tried this with,” says Gil. “Let me in. It’ll be beautiful.”

When Jackie hesitates to get naked, despite the other times when they simply fucked, he feels tears running down his own face. 

“You’re too good at this,” says Jackie. “You figured it out, Detective. I’m not as tough as I come off.”

“You’re a whole lot tougher,” says Gil. “If you go around lugging this crap all the time. It’s all the time, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jackie says. She peels off the silk. Gil pulls her close and she squats on his half-hard dick. Her feet press his ass cheeks. They don’t rut like teenagers despite the overwhelming instinct to join. Gil kisses Jackie with no other thoughts besides her cinnamon lip balm. He pulls the pins out of her hair and rubs circles into her scalp. Jackie knuckles down the tense knot beneath his left shoulder blade.

Because they both want nothing more than to stay in each other, orgasm is not an urgent quest. Gil and Jackie aim for the physical rhythms of their hearts beating as one. Their eyes meet in the space between looking and seeing. Gil’s cock rises to full mast from the happiness on Jackie’s face when he touches her everywhere. She rocks on his lap.

When Gil’s phone rings, they separate for long enough that Gil answers a quick question before yanking the line. Jackie sits on a throne of pillows, legs bent, leaning back on her palms and forearms. Gil gets his butt on the bed and scoots until he inches inside her, the bottom of his feet on the bed, body open like hers. The back of her knee crooks along his thigh. Her calves press his sides when Jackie grinds her clit against his pelvis. 

Gil feels up her smooth thigh, impressed that she shaved above her knees. He rubs each foot until her body shivers. He smiles at the paint job on her tootsies; a fresh new coat of black polish. She made herself ready for him, for their moment, and Gil holds her more dearly than a thousand magic rocks or all the pearls in the ocean.

“Let me see you come on my dick, babe.” Whether she needs to get off or if he needs to see her lose it, it’s all the same to Gil. He gets Jackie on her back and raises her legs all the way up before he fucks her. His wrist bends beneath her underarms. He rolls his hips over the top of her muff, in large circles until her lips part under his kiss and she goes still.

Gil makes her come two more times before they stop for drinks chilled in their cooler. The second time, he keeps Jackie folded while fisting his shaft. The tip of his cock feels around for the inner bundle of softness on her front wall just off to the left. Instead of overworking her clit, Gil prods her in that special place. He doesn’t have to go deep; he just has to go left until she gushes cream. The third time, he drags her by her ankles until her ass is up against their headboard. Jackie’s ankles hover over her wavy black hair. All the blood that’s not in her pussy rushes to her head. Balls to the wall, Gil bends his knees into a squat and drills her into ecstasy. It’s good when she slobbers on her breasts. Her eyes are in his head even when she closes them to squirt.

Those 48 hours, Gil decides, is the first night they made love in their marriage.

Time goes fast because they're busy. Jackie sells her car to pay off their wedding. She transits to her job at the hotel from their apartment. They scrape to buy their house, vacationing no further than his Le Mans can take them.

"Why are you making all this noise, babe?" asks Gil when he catches Jackie rapping her knuckles and dropping silver dollars onto their dining table.

"Drumming up money, babe," she answers.

After a few years married, rather than spark a fight, Gil files away her frantic behavior as another one of Jackie's stress rituals. He doesn't get nearly enough time off to spend with her when she's not also tired from the back biting among her coworkers.

The police union negotiates an increased pay bump and Gil's Lieutenant makes it rain overtime hours. Jackie leaves her job for a higher end hotel chain that pays more for her experience.

Gil's blood drains from his heart when Jackie drops a check for thousands of dollars USD at church.

"Babe, we were doing so good gettin' ahead," Gil sputters. He watches mortgage payments float away on the brass plate.

"And where did all that good come from?" retorts Jackie.

He doesn't get what Jackie means until bullets flatten the tire of his unmarked work vehicle. A cop is shot blind on his watch, but Gil gets to see his beautiful wife dusting the rock collection and polishing her funky ceramic pot.

Her hair is bunned up like a pair of clouds. She's in his T-shirt and her inside flip flops. Even though dinner is all in one pan, the meat chews good and the vegetables are colorful and he smells the fragrance of basil and rosemary instead of sweat and vomit. Soft rice pads his stomach.

"I'm taking a day off next week for a doctor's appointment. Do you want me to take your car in for a tune up? It's been awhile since you say you do it," mentions Jackie.

"I'll do it tomorrow," says Gil. He will take the Le Mans to his buddy the mechanic. "Lieutenant Turner doesn't want me in for a couple days."

"That bad?" says Jackie.

"It's bad for one of the unis. I'm going to stop by the hospital for Garcia," says Gil.

Jackie invites him to bathe with her. He smiles from the tea candles hazy from the steaming hot bathwater. Little flower sprigs float on the foamy surface. Gil sits up straight in the tub and stretches his legs. Her blended oils make his skin slide like nothing along the tub's enamel surface. Muscles bleed away tension. 

His gray shirt with the faded NYPD logo drops onto the bath mat. Jackie is shorter than him but every time she gets naked, she always fills his vision like she's bigger than he can see. She sits in his lap and puts her hand over his heart. It takes him a bit of time before he can look up and give her his eyes.

Just half a minute of staring makes his chest ache. Gil strokes the back of her neck before his palm cups over his wife's heart. Their connection is kindled in water and light and the air itself flows through their synced breaths like they're one.

"You with me, Babe?" she says.

"No," says Gil. His eyes prickle at the corners as she drips heated water over his shoulders. Her fingers rub each ear, nimble as a little flame.

"It's tomorrow. I'm on my phone when Turner tells me that Garcia is off the force for good. I'm in the hospital with the guy's pregnant fiancée."

"You're not there yet. Walk it back," says Jackie. She tugs his ear and pats over his heart.

"Oh God, babe. Thank God you're here," mumbles Gil. He doesn't understand her smile, but he can share in it. His lips curl. He starts to enjoy kissing his favorite person. They stroke each other in the water. Jackie watches his face and goes faster. Her own expressions melt into rapture as Gil fondles her leisurely.

When they roll around in their bed, Gil is in pain, but he is also fully inside Jackie. Her pleasure takes all his focus. Her body demands every inch. Gil puts his weight on her upper back, sinking her into the mattress, and pumps his hips, wet skin sticking and slapping. When he feels her cunt flexing around his shaft, Gil grinds out his thrusts, going deeper but counting longer in-between. Her moans harshen into growling curses. He reels her from the edge but keeps her strung out on his length. She scratches the bedding like a mad cat. Gil pinches and rubs her clit like he's starting a fire. 

As she desperately writhes, Gil squeezes her slick mound and bites her shoulder. He feels her sweet spots on the underside of his dick, rocks his body to work the erect curve. He wraps his arms around Jackie and holds on as she gushes hard enough to wet his knees. 

"Good girl. That's my girl. Make my pussy pop for me." He fists the base of his cock, bracing himself for the hard squeeze pushing him out. He rides out the hot clench, moaning and gripping her waist, erupting when deep flesh clamps the top of his dick. When he can stand without circles glowing behind his eyeballs, Gil rinses his nuts in the sink and wipes his legs with the damp washcloth that smells like little flowers. He rinses the washcloth again and swabs down Jackie who's lying in her own puddle.

"Thanks, Babe," she grins, humming as her clean skin glimmers in their bedside lamps.

It's late so Gil puts down a dry folded towel. The bed will be okay because of a rubber cover under the bed linens.

Jackie hugs him close, their bodies aligning heart to stomach. He closes his lids when her breasts pillow his spine and her fingertips curve on top of his soft balls. He sleeps good with his wife warming his balls.

They have it so good, Gil knows. He knows better than to brag it out loud. If Gil had to complain, he wishes their house didn't spring a leak when they make plans to budget more savings. They crack the nest egg to pay the plumber. 

He's not totally surprised when Jackie tells him why she's crying on her work day off. He hears ultrasound which in and of itself is like a little nudge to his ribs. But ultrasound and MRI and hormone therapy altogether is not a fair fight because he is one man.

For months, Gil takes his time getting home from work. He never knows if he will get a kiss and hugs or if she'll be blowing smoke around the house, heat running full blast, and all windows open in the dead of winter. The lingering char smell makes him wake up in the middle of the night because he smells smoke in their cold bedroom.

Gil sits at his own desk which he doesn't share with any partner because he is a sergeant now. And he sweats when he stops doing work because his home life is a smoky haze and he can't see the fire. The only place where he is safe is his lunch break in the bathroom stall with a skin mag.

Jackie's meds make her certifiably crazy. He has no peace in his house. The TV will be off and he can be reading quietly and Jackie gets pissed at him for leaving unwashed socks in his shoes.

Gil thinks the worst is over when the evil GYN takes her off the hormones. Jackie gained weight from comfort food, but she seems to be done with losing her mind.

Then it's his turn to snap when he comes home to a note. He almost wishes that it wasn't in her handwriting or that it's letters snipped from a magazine by a wannabe maniac. Then Gil can go out and save her. But she left on her own. She holed up somewhere and she doesn't have a car that will tip him off to where.

He tosses their trash for clues. It's rocks, dirty bags of rocks. He fishes out her special ceramic pot from coffee grinds and broken eggs. He's mad enough to smash it to bits. Instead, he tucks it under his arm and rinses it off in the sink. It goes back into her cabinet which is also missing stuff. Her baby food jars and her spices have vacated the premise.

Rather than burn gas driving nowhere, Gil unwraps her casserole and chews through his thoughts. After filling up his stomach, he opens every window and cools his head. 

He can't be mad at the outcome when he let her be crazy.

The first night with Jackie away is survivable because he's working the grave shift when the bodies are incoming. He doesn't sleep the nights after. His shield goes nowhere at the hotel where Jackie works because she took sick leave for the whole week. Gil almost wears a bald spot into the rabbit foot. Though he knows better, he tries her mom's place.

"She up and disappeared on you, too?" says Jackie's mom. Her questions come at him like mortar rounds, enlightens Gil to the holes in his marriage. She bottle feeds her newest grandbaby in a smelly kitchen. Her single parent children live with her.

Gil helps take out the diaper bin and leaves a little money as a belated gift for the new baby. Then he mosies back to the house. 

He dozes off on the sofa clutching Jackie's one of a kind ceramic pot. The last thing he remembers is rubbing the chipped glaze. Gil wakes up thinking about the motel where Jackie used to work. He calls their bank. He asks one of his detectives to help him. Tarmel doesn't let him down. 

Jackie left Gil the husband, but Sergeant Arroyo puts her back into her place. 

Jackie goes into surgery and takes too long coming back up. He quietly bargains with God, but maybe the devil hears. Gil asks for Jackie even if she has to get old and childless with him. He thinks he can live with that until they get doctor recommendations for surrogacy or adoption. Jackie looks like she woke up for a lifetime of nightmares.

"At least we don't have to find no IVF money," says Jackie.

If IVF involves Jackie taking hormone injections on her butt, Gil doesn't want anywhere near that.

"We can steal one of your nieces," says Gil.

Without any babies to save up for, Gil treats himself to a fancy watch. It cheers him up when he sees it light his wrist. The little yellow gold stripe distinguishes the watch from other platinum watches around the city. It also reminds Gil of the yellow paint strip from crashing the Le Mans, the morning when he knew Jackie was the one. Gil checks his watch often for the time when he gets to go home. They can spruce up their front yard with Jackie's plants and cuddle up after doing home projects.

Jackie begs Gil not to come into work, but he can't stay away. Tarmel is on his honeymoon which means Gil is on call for Tarmel's cases. Gil owes Tarmel for helping him find Jackie so he takes responsibility. Gil is glad that Tarmel worked out his paranoia issues and married his longtime girlfriend. The man deserves the good life after crawling out of the desert by his bootstraps and scorched fatigues.

Even if Tarmel and his Mrs. weren't sipping coconuts on a green volcano, Gil would have answered the call when their team is alerted to unis chasing down a murder suspect fleeing Brooklyn. Their murder suspect, investigation pending, is the driver to a slum lord whose properties are seized by cops for heroin, same day. Gil thinks if the crooks get out of Brooklyn, they'll go through Harlem where folks won't aid police, hit the Heights, and then make it to Jersey.

The criminals are shooting innocent drivers, wreaking spin outs on route 278 with automatic weapons. While the patrol cars don't stop, they slow to report mass casualties for dispatch to send out buses. Gil's lieutenant assumes that the getaway car will zoom over the Koch Queensboro Bridge. Instead, Gil and another detective help squads cut off the getaway vehicle at Queensbridge Park. The criminals divert onto Vernon. Gil gets ahead of his subordinate in his Le Mans, tailing the siren lights.

Out of the routes possible, their murder suspect opts out of the streets and roadways. He takes his chances driving on the rail tracks of Hell Gate Bridge. Gil cuts the engine and leaves his keys in the ignition. He goes out to the squad cars likewise posted at Astoria Park. Police officers traverse Hell Gate. Gil spots a glossy black car on the rail tracks, conspicuous against the deep red painted bridge.

Gil goes back and forth on his radio and with his lieutenant to make sure the rail company delays their schedule on the Northeast Corridor tracks. He can't assume the unis did anything but run toward the stupid black car jammed on the tracks. He runs with the radio out and keeps his gun holstered to leave one hand free when he slips. He is wearing bad shoes for the tracks, the balls of his feet striking steel rungs and gliding into the next heart pounding moment.

Backup is on the other end of the bridge. He does what he can when he meets other cops in the middle. The cops have their hands up. The murder suspect, who Gil recognizes from Tarmel's interrogations, has his semi automatic aimed at a cop who is fallen on the tracks. The fallen cop is alive though injured.

"All of you police line up," says the man cowering behind the black car door. He must be the slum lord. Puffed up on ill-gotten gains, he is chubbier than his erstwhile driver.

"You're not getting to Jersey," says Gil. He and three unis stand along the red painted steel frame parapet. With low retaining walls, the East River is a straight drop down.

Gil does not negotiate with criminals in charge. He's accustomed to situations where he has the table and the criminal plays their hand. He is wildly out of element despite his time as a beat cop. Gil shuts his yap and he shifts his weight when the officer fallen on the tracks stands up shooting at the gunman.

The gunman staggers like he's been hit by a Hollywood bullet. Another officer kicks the semiautomatic onto the bridge deck. The other officers go after the slum lord fleeing the getaway vehicle. The gunman retaliates with a pistol. He gets multiple .22 rounds into Gil's chest. Gil doesn't flail because he's eaten lead before. 

Black blood inks his hand, blotting out his life lines and stinking like copper pennies crossing his palm. As the air rushes around Gil, his blood runs scarlet, outshining the badge. He breathes deep and grabs the trigger happy murder suspect, moving quick before his brain tattles to his body. He sends himself and their murder suspect 100 feet below. The case will go down as solved for Tarmel. Heck of a wedding gift. 

With Jackie safe at home, the only thing left for Gil Arroyo to do is cross over to the other side of Hell Gate.


	3. Mermaid Malcolm

“What makes a man, my Lord?” Malcolm inquires of his father Martin.

“Broken down to essential matter, man is comprised of water, carbon, ammonia, lime, phosphorus, salt, saltpeter, sulfur, fluorine, iron, silicone, and fifteen trace elements,” answers Martin.

Though his father is a master of alchemy and uncontested manipulator of physical substance, Malcolm is not appreciative of his father’s effervescent cleverness.

“What are men on earth like?” asks Malcolm. Malcolm’s brown hair is as long as the bottom of his ear lobes and his soft chin belies his youth. Though he is longer lived than the average years of mortal men, Malcolm’s heart is not made callous. He is abundantly passionate in his adolescence.

With the twitch of his beard hairs, Martin lectures his son as to the physiological differences between land lubbers and their own amphibious race, the merfolk. 

“Father, you ken well what I meant. Are men as cruel and despicable a tribe as rumors have it? Considering your numerous studies of live subjects, surely you can verify or discredit hearsay,” says Malcolm.

At Malcolm’s expressive dissatisfaction, Martin laughs from deep in his belly. “How about you accompany your sire to the realm of mortals?”

“I just may!” Malcolm rejoins. And so, he journeys from their nautical kingdom in Faerie to shockingly desolate waters travailed by humans. He doesn’t object to the intensive effects of venturing into unknown waters, such as fatigue and confusion. The protective detail which his father provides is very wanting.

“Gettin’ gray in the gills, little Malcolm?” snickers John when the three of them surface. In contrast to the smooth and harmoniously arranged opalescent scales which Malcolm inherits from his father Martin, John is scaled with shark flesh which is peaked and grooved like teeth. The massive muscles of his jaws are meant for gripping and crushing.

“Am I deafened? I hear nothing,” cries Malcolm, panicked. He grabs his head and shakes it to alleviate the disorientation of sensory loss. The dimming sunlight aggravates his fears. Distant human dwellings form a jagged skyline which divides water and sky; giant metal structures dwarf his vision.

“My boy,” says Martin. He draws Malcolm to him. “Be still, you are not injured. What you perceive is as it is. We ought to have warned you, but John and I are accustomed to the hush.”

“Where are they?” asks Malcolm, forlorn. John’s mockery abates.

“Nothing you’d want to bring home lives in this river,” says John. When John brushes by him, Malcolm does not shrink from the discomfiting friction of John’s abrasive skin. Their mutual dislike of one another thaws in the eerie atmosphere. They instinctively cling to the incidental assurance that neither of them are alone.

“Come, the sooner we collect our trifles, the more expedient our return,” orders Martin. He sounds detached because he and his young son are hunting. To be more precise, the merfolk go fishing for humans. “One does not snatch up an unwilling soul to spirit away to our world. Their ill will negatively colors the series of events to come. Men have plenty of will. Pluck, they call it.”

“I don’t understand your interest in mortals,” says Malcolm.

“You ain’t cut into a wiggler,” says John. “Twitch twitch, they go. Darnedest sight to see.”

“How is it that you can dissect a living mortal? I can’t imagine that any organism yields to your knife without protest?” asks Malcolm. His father’s involved approach to studying humans adds to his nausea.

“Your father is careful to select humans who forfeit their lives,” answers Martin. “You see this land bridge overhead?”

“Why do they paint it one color?” asks Malcolm. No stonework or tiling or vegetation softens the harsh angular planes.

“The paint combats rot in their alloys. The color scheme is unfortunate,” says Martin. “I’ll have to survey my test subjects for a general consensus.”

Martin brings their exchange to Malcolm’s earlier question. “As to how your father procures his subjects, I enjoy leeway when I come across humans who attempt to suicide from their bridges. At times, humans drive their horseless carriages into the waters. They likely did not mean to do so. I leave the ones in their carriages to their natural ends. However, those humans which dive into the waters bear a death wish. The act of committing suicide with the intent to end their own lives allows me to…” Martin’s hands flick as he searches for a fitting term. “...facilitate their inevitable deaths without fear of magical repercussions.”

“They throw themselves away. We snap up the trash,” says John, his muscular jaws flexing side to side in anticipation of a good catch.

After sundown, the city of humans glimmers like stars. Martin salvages a maiden dressed in a white gown and a charm bracelet. Martin tugs her corn silk tresses and enchants her into wakeful paralysis. John fetches a wasted male youth with brown hair and the bones of his chest and ribs jutting prominently beneath his ashen skin.

“He kinda looks like you,” John teases Malcolm. John dunks the lad a few times until he loses consciousness. John chains the youth by his limp arms and tows him like a pet. “This little guy needs a bath, what a stinker.”

Martin insists on Malcolm obtaining one more specimen for the collection. The water takes longer to bring Malcolm a lost soul. They search along two locations which Martin identifies as the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. The jarring squeal and the shrill whines and flashes of light from horseless carriages overhead causes Malcolm to stall as he swims ploddingly beneath a low red bridge with large arches spanning its lengths. The sky indicates mid-morning; one whole night and the leftovers of daybreak spent in the mortal world.

John is content to hang back until he senses blood in the water. A human with a broken neck floats facedown. Malcolm chases a speck of gold catching the sun, quick as a flash. Malcolm doesn’t have long to grab a human. Malcolm dives further, spine flexing side to side, racing beneath the corpse with the broken neck. Located close to his hips, his pectoral fins and supporting ventral fins direct him into a sharp turn. Malcolm snaps the stalk-like muscular column of his peduncle powering the movements of his fins.

The human sports a clipped beard on its terrified face. It’s a man with skin darker than the other humans. Malcolm cranes his pale neck and joins lips with the man to give him breath. Their fingers lock as Malcolm’s short brunette tresses undulate around their interlocked faces.

“He’s got more holes than a sponge,” criticizes John. His dark eyes narrow into thoughtful slits. “Let me take a look.”

“You can’t eat them,” says Malcolm, cradling the grubby human.

“Malcolm!” calls Martin as John furiously chases his petulant son. “John! You can play with the other human. You like 'em dead."

The chase is on, leaving Martin alone in the polluted waters. Almost alone. "Dearie me. We ought to have stopped for nibbles in the Chesapeake.” Martin pats his latest catch on her pretty little head. “Have you been to Jersey, my dear? I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s all downstream.” A shriek trickles out despite the human woman’s lockjaw.

Though it’s as quiet as the grave, the salinity of the waterways amplify the power of their spell work. The return home from their hunting trip concludes uneventfully, despite crossing an otherworldly portal into Faerie, arms laden with hapless mortals.

Home for them is the ancestral abode of his mother’s lineage. Martin is Lord of the Isle, but the law of their reef is enforced by the Milton seal, sovereign of a fief in the Far Blue Isle. Their matriarchal clan serves fae rulers of Tír fo Thuinn (Land Under the Waves) who are Muirenn Peucag, Queen of the Waterfalls, and her consort Máel Toile.

A mist of lights wreathes the Far Blue Isle. Each island, crowned by green valleys and mineral rich mountains, rises proudly above a clear placid sea. The sea-caves shelter many fish and healing plants of rare varieties not found past the border between Tír fo Thuinn and Tír na nÓg (Land of Youth).

Lady Jessica, her spouse, and her children reside in a gold trimmed crystal stone palace seated upon an archipelago draped by sea foam and green ripples, bejeweled with enchanted coral forming a supernatural barrier. They live in their own floating garden with sun kissed flowers, fruit, and birds. Gemstones line the river beds which water the roots of a plentiful forest replete with silver boughed holly and hazel, elder and rowan and bright ash. Unicorns and white stags with gold pronged ivory pluck the leaves and hazelnuts. Merfolk who tenant the isle bequeathed to the Milton clan may live below the surface or earn their livelihoods atop the volcanic soil.

Martin brings the mortals to a feather thatched hut on the outermost bounds of the palace. The hut rests on stilts surrounded by a lake filled with giant lily pads and lotus blooming for miles. He keeps the maiden in a lacquered chest. John retires to his grandmother’s submerged cottage shingled by sea urchins and anemones; he brings his catch to a remote sea-cave where healing moss grows plentifully. 

Martin lays gifted hands on the mortals, preferring them at optimal health before he studies them. Malcolm takes up a guest room in his family’s hut as they tend to the wounded mortals. Malcolm leaves in brief trips to procure ingredients, supplies, and nourishment. 

Malcolm’s only companion is Sunshine, his funny little fowl. Malcolm found the odd thing twined in vines forming an unintentional noose. Scaled instead of feathered, Sunshine was the size of a half-plucked chicken. Malcolm thought the breathless creature had fallen on some ugly sticks stuck to its head. When no amount of pulling removed the embedded twigs, the beginnings of velvet nubs grew to crooked horns. When Sunshine was in a mood, the bird would puff in the air which inflated obscene fun bags on its chest.

“What use are its wings?” Jessica bade Malcolm to drop his fowl little friend into a volcano. “A lava treatment would certainly improve its appearance.”

However, within minutes of encountering a friend down on its luck, Malcolm was prepared to die for Sunshine. He ignored the adults marveling that perhaps a goblin fancied peckering hens over elderberry wine.

Similar to how he felt when he swaddled the injured bird, Malcolm delicately cuts away the man’s clothes. With his father’s coaching, Malcolm cleans mortal wounds and dresses the punctures with so much healing red moss. The man’s oddly fashioned textiles are blood stained and reeking of death. He leaves the gold ring, feeling intrusive when he spins it on the man’s sticky fingers. Malcolm’s consolation prize is the time piece strapped to the man’s arm. 

He places the time piece on his own wrist. It floats off his fingertips or halfway towards his elbow when Malcolm swims without paying attention.

While the man rests, Malcolm pretends. He lounges in the lake water, his arms folded on the threshold of the hut. “‘allo, I’m a mister. Mister Malcolm. Ex squeeze me, did you want the time?”

Malcolm sweeps back his hair and smacks the water with his large tail fin. “It’s… hammer time!” Human idioms twist strangely on his tongue.

Human goods are mounted on the walls of the hut. John salvages items as odd gifts for his father. One of the few things which Martin keeps is a rectangular device housed in false wood. John wrapped thin crystals with dwarf whiskers and jury rigged them into the human device. Music of another world plays through mesh wire nets within the false wood grain box.

_Operator, well could you help me place this call?_  
_See, the number on the matchbook is old and faded_

Martin loops the music as he dotes on his live subjects. “These humans, my dear boy, are quite capable of excellent alternatives to magic.”

Malcolm’s human recuperates while his father and John hang out in his father’s workshop. Malcolm is grateful for the thin walls which obscure their handiwork. Whatever is spoken between them is muffled in bespelled silence, as insisted by Lady Jessica after dealing with her son’s night terrors. She keeps her daughter, Ainsley the perfect, close to herself. Ainsley will one day become Lady of the Isle.

Malcolm looks upon the man whose wounds he dressed, who he spoon fed with nectar, and sponged with dew.

“Jack…” he hears. Malcolm instills soothing dewdrops into the man’s parched throat.

“Why were you in the water?” asks Malcolm. “Did you jump? What was worth dying for?”

“Didn’t,” the man wheezes. He is forced to inhale slowly, paralyzed while he heals. “Fell.”

“Do you wish to live, mortal?” asks Malcolm.

“Please.”

“And for what reason do you cling to life?” demands Malcolm. 

“Jackie.” After a moment, the man affirms, ”My wife.”

“There is no greater cause than that of true love,” says Malcolm, swooning in face of an unexpected noble spirit. “I will help you, if you give me your name.” His eyes glow mesmerizing blue like open waters.

The man whispers it to him and Malcolm warns him. “I’m Malcolm. Tell no one else who you truly are, Gil Arroyo. Least of all my father. Your name is your life. My father means to kill you and he is very practiced in the ways of men. You are not among humankind.”

When Martin declares the man whole and healthy, he cleanses maiden blood from his finely balanced knives, hilt furnished with mother of pearl. Malcolm intercedes on Gil’s behalf.

“My Lord father, this one is not yours to keep,” says Malcolm. Malcolm sports legs in his shimmering aquamarine suit, planting himself between Martin and the mortal whose story enthralls him. His short brunette hair falls in his eyes as he makes his impassioned plea. “The cause of his imminent death was not suicide. He is a constable in the realm of mortals. He fulfilled his warrior duties, honorably. That he should be felled for sport is not just!”

“What is your name, rank, and title, sir?” inquires Martin. To Malcolm: “He would be referred to as a police officer in his homeland.”

“Sergeant Arroyo,” answers Gil while his captor sips a steaming beverage from a silver goblet delicately wrought with gem encrusted tentacles. In accordance with Malcolm’s warning, Gil deftly avoids surrendering his good Christian name to the fae.

“Arroyo?” repeats Martin. “As in, a stream? What a fine name. How is it that you’ve sunk so low?” Once Martin hears of Gil’s misadventures, he regretfully brings the matter to his spouse. 

Jessica, Lady of the Isle, listens to merfolk while seated as a magistrate on a rough cut throne entrenched within levels of stony corals, organ pipe corals, sea fans, sea rods, colored in arrays of red coral, blue coral, and jet black chitin skeletons branching finely like lacework. Glassfish oscillate along her seat of rulership, as though reflecting Jessica’s power.

The Lady of the Isle bears a silken mantle verdant as seawater, billowing like waves, and tasseled in gradients of blue green tourmaline, pale blue topaz, and midnight sapphire. The ostentatious cape nearly eclipses her aquamarine tail. Gil, in his lux black threads shining iridescent blues and pinks, tries not to bow like she’s a sultan.

She emancipates Sergeant Arroyo from Martin’s care, with conditions. 

“You shall live the rest of your days as a guest in our isle,” declares Lady Jessica. “You will be reasonably sheltered. You will not want for fresh meals and good drink."

Lord Martin clasps her hand and Jessica nods to him before she informs Gil, "You are responsible for honoring our laws and adapting to our customs.”

“Do I have any right to bear arms?” says Gil.

“Hopefully you are a quick study with sword point,” says Jessica. Those who are present chuckle at Gil's expense.

“My wife is also human and she lives on earth,” says Gil. “I can’t be without her.”

“The temporal norms of your world are not as kindly as in our world. Each year that elapses is seven of yours. She will have long since buried you,” says Jessica.

"How would my people bury me? They won't find my body. Please send me back. With all due respect, ma’am. I take my marriage seriously,” begs Gil. 

"Are you rejecting the hospitality of my clan?" asks Jessica.

"I'm thankful for what I’ve been given, ma'am. Your Ladyship," says Gil. The only sound to be heard is water rushing around Jessica's throne. He steps back when he sees disapproval chase around the onlookers’ faces. A look at Malcolm’s embarrassment and his fear convinces Gil not to press his suit.

“Dude, that’s your mom? I felt like I was in hot water the whole time, ” Gil says to Malcolm in privacy. He and Malcolm trod upon wet sands, the grains shifting in a stunning array of reds, pinks, and gold.

“Yes, do you doubt my parentage? I hope you're not suffering another fever. Our aquatic environment is always temperate,” replies Malcolm, frowning. 

Gil laughs and says, "Dude, hot water is just an expression for humans. It means you're cooked, you're done, you're finished."

Malcolm is unsure how he feels about being referred to as a dude, a term which he understands can be exchanged between mere acquaintances.

“I can believe that the hot bitch in charge is your mother. I definitely see the resemblance. Both of you boss people around, kid,” says Gil. Gil plops his bottom into the water and strikes the incoming wave with the anger which he restrained in Lady Jessica's hearings. “What gets me is that I’ll live longer but I can’t buy time to say goodbye! Give my girl some much needed closure. How long has it been since you guys nabbed me?”

“Not to put too fine of a point on metrics,” says Malcolm. “Daylight is 13 hours as is our evenings. Father explained to me that humans interpret their days as 24 hours long.”

“Kid, what’s the damage?” asks Gil.

“I am not a child,” retorts Malcolm. He doesn’t look at Gil hanging his head. “I estimate that you’ve stayed with us for two hundred and thirteen days.”

“In your world?!” exclaims Gil. “Christ on crackers. I didn't feel it go like that. Time just leaving me.”

"Two hundred and thirteen days have passed on earth,” clarifies Malcolm. He pirouettes into the sea, gaining his fins. The roaring spray doesn’t disguise Gil’s heartbroken sobs. Malcolm returns when Gil's sorrow ebbs.

"I'm sick over it, Malcolm. I can't let my girl go. We didn't get to do it up. I was gonna help her get the yard up to snuff. Do something with that extra bedroom in our house. And now she's gonna duke it out alone?" Gil punches the sand. His eyes are fixed beyond the coastline.

"I am sorry for your loss," says Malcolm.

"My loss? I didn't lose anything. I got me a second chance to live. I can mooch off your folks without paying a dime." Gil waves his hand. "But back on earth, people pay for shit. My life insurance will pick up the costs of my empty casket. My wife will get my pension. But when she gets sick again, she can't keep our house for more than a couple years. She can never take a day off work. Shoulda been me and her fo' eva." Gil buries his face in his arms, bringing his legs up to his chest. Malcolm tentatively drapes his arm over Gil's shirt. The sand grains shift beneath them as Gil leans into Malcolm.

Malcolm is at a loss on how to please the man. Gil is not neglected or overlooked in a splendid palace but he conducts himself halfheartedly and without spirit. Despite his friendly manners, Gil doesn't ingratiate himself to others besides the Milton family. He doesn't explore what is accessible to him. Gil keeps close to his personal quarters and drinks a solitary bottle of wine; he depends on clocks to track his hours for sleeping, meal times, and exercise. 

Malcolm fishes out an article of jewelry for the man. Gil accepts the return of his time piece with bemusement. He holds the silvery time piece to his ear and frowns before shaking it. Gil’s short fingernails clack along the golden links in the middle of the flexible strap.

“Does it no longer delight you to adorn yourself?” asks Malcolm.

“It’s not ticking anymore. Fat lot of good it will do me with the thirteen hours,” says Gil.

“I can have it adjusted for you, if you desire it,” offers Malcolm.

“No, don’t screw with my piece. There isn’t anything like it in this world,” says Gil. He swats Malcolm’s shoulder. “Thanks for keeping it warm for me.”

“Is it meant to be kept warm? Is the metal living?” says Malcolm.

Malcolm supposes that Gil must be agile by the standards of men. Thin cloth strips wrap Gil’s hands and he dances around a stuffed bag dangling from a tree branch, boxing it until sand pours on the roots of the tree in a cone shaped heap.

Malcolm peeks around a tree trunk as Gil rakes his black hair from his damp forehead. He strips his shirt and swabs the back of his neck, panting heavily. While Lord Martin removed the projectiles fired into Gil and repaired internal damage, he did not fade the scars. The smattering of marks do not detract from the shapeliness of Gil’s well muscled upper body.

“Thanks, kid,” says Gil, accepting a canteen of water chilled like mountain runoff. Malcolm gets his nape briefly squeezed by Gil’s hot hand. “You did good. This tastes damn fine.” Gil’s eyes are darkly tinted like John’s but they are worlds different and Malcolm is gladder for it.

“How do our victuals compare to those of earth?” asks Malcolm.

“Everything here tastes amazing, but somehow it doesn’t stick to your ribs,” says Gil. “If the women I know found out about this place, you’d have to hide your whatcha-ma-call-its portals.”

Malcolm is content to get left behind when his father and John make their hunting forays into the mortal world. Until Gil asks him about it.

"I don't enjoy hunting," says Malcolm. "I would think you'd distance yourself from me if I were to join in on my father's cruel practices which target your species."

"You should go with them when you can. Tell me what you see," says Gil. "I don't like what your pop gets up to, but I honestly don't know what to think anymore. He's not human. That's all I got. He's not human."

"Neither am I. My father and I are composed of identical elements. He and I are the same," says Malcolm.

"You're not," says Gil. "Thank God for that."

"I'm glad you do not find me loathsome," says Malcolm.

"Look at you cracking a joke," approves Gil. He flashes a rare smile. "I might owe your mom an apology though."

Whenever Malcolm ventures into the mortal world with his father, he takes a strapped pouch with him to collect interesting items. He leaves his bird Sunshine with his human, much to Gil's consternation.

"This bird's got breasts I wouldn't eat," says Gil, pronouncing Sunshine a lost cause.

"My pet is not fit for consumption," says Malcolm, alarmed by the possibility.

"Not even with tubs of buffalo sauce and ranch dip," agrees Gil. He dodges around Sunshine nipping at his shins. "You gotta have good wings for that, ya damn bird!"

Malcolm is happy to come back to his friends sniping at one another. His return apparently signals a cease fire between man and birb. While he is gone, Malcolm learns that Gil found a friend.

Gil's friend is a human woman who belongs to a water sprite couple plying their trade throughout the Far Blue Isle and neighboring waters in Tír fo Thuinn. Malcolm formally invites the water sprites for a luncheon while their humans socialize.

"How did you get involved with the Fae, Tanaka?" says Gil.

"Sex party yacht," answers Tanaka, the woman. "I went overboard when my harness failed."

"Trussed up like a gift with all sorts of toys and ribbons," says Charles. He squeezes his wife's leg. "Naturally, I presented her to my Simone."

"At the time, we were vacationing among the mortals. Some of them are quite good hosts," adds Simone.

"Do you visit Earth often? Do you go with them?" Gil asks Tanaka.

The water sprites look to Malcolm knowingly.

"Mr. Arroyo hasn't been among us for long," explains Malcolm. "He understands that he must stay though he doesn't understand the finer points of travel limitations."

"Mortals require patience. Luckily, we netted a clever one. Our pet chose to come with us," says Simone.

"We're looking to breed her," says Charles. "A human mate would be ideal. Halflings are too chaotic by their mixed natures. Would you be willing to offer us your companion? He's very comely."

"I will consider it," says Malcolm, knowing Gil would do no such thing. "What is it that you did prior to meeting Charles and Simone, Miss Tanaka?"

"It's Doctor Tanaka, actually. I wrote science essays for each human dead in Manhattan. It was murder," says Tanaka with a groan. She winks at Gil. "Not all the time, though. Sometimes people make mistakes with another person's body."

"I think I've run across your work," says Gil, excited. "Were you in forensics?"

"I was an ME. You must have read my autopsies. Were you with the prosecution or investigations?" asks Tanaka.

"Homicide!" says Gil.

"City morgue. We slab 'em," says Tanaka slyly.

"And we nab 'em!" retorts Gil. "But who the hell whacked 'em?"

"I thought I spotted a knucklehead from NYPD," says Tanaka, snickering. Their hands smack together in an overhead clap.

Malcolm nearly turns blue as Charles and Simone enlighten him on recreational pastimes enjoyed by creatively inclined mortals. Malcolm has participated in rapturous festivities, but he does not seriously entertain the notion of using Gil as prescribed by other fae.

"Your progeny with Tanaka would be clever," says Malcolm, later on. He avoids a sharp tap aimed at his head. "And very comely."

Joking with Gil makes him feel safe.

"How about you tell me about travel limitations from here to Earth? Or point me to somewheres I can learn a thing or two about this place?!" demands Gil. Malcolm observes that exchanging words with a fellow human ignites Gil's spirit.

Until they step foot inside his family's private library, Malcolm doesn't realize how much he's missed daily reading. He doesn't read nearly as much as he did prior to meeting Gil and looking after the man's welfare. Malcolm shows Gil his favorite place in all the realms.

"How many floors up does it go?" asks Gil.

"This is one way to ascend the heavens," says Malcolm.

"Christ. The shelves go down, too. All the way to China, I'll bet," says Gil. He grabs a thick and coarse stone white rail which bends and curves with colonies of spiny sea plants.

Malcolm chuckles at Gil's overwhelmed expression. He flips a white sand dollar from the balcony. Gil waits for it to land. He freaks out on Malcolm when he doesn't hear the sand dollar land after a long way down.

"In the middle levels, you'll find encyclopedias and books. Further below are parchment scrolls. Underneath the scrolls are large stone pillars and tableau preserved in enchanted spring waters which only permit merfolk," says Malcolm, smirking. "There is no bottom floor."

"Imagine having to read all this," mutters Gil, looking like a man condemned to hell.

"Yes, it's paradise." Malcolm sighs as he plucks a volume which catches his eye.

The white sand dollar arches over the balcony rail, bounces onto floor tiles which form an aquatic mural, before it spins at their feet. "What the fuck," says Gil, hopping away lest it touch his shimmery loafers.

"The wards on our restricted reading are working perfectly then," says Malcolm absently as he turns pages. He bids Gil to follow him. Malcolm lays out the open volume on a broad study table with spiny support legs but a polished granite surface. His cheek presses Gil's as he whispers an incantation, mouthing Gil's full name into the spiral of the man's ears.

Malcolm addresses him formally with other fae present, but when they are alone, he likes Gil's name on his lips. Malcolm luxuriates in manipulating the mortal though it be for his betterment.

"Thanks, kid," says Gil when he notices the effect. The foreign texts yield to Gil, made legible to him by Malcolm's enchantment.

"What does this mean?" asks Gil. "Humans can't leave Earth thrice?"

"Mortals are made of earthly elements. You breathe with her. You grow with her. You vault through space and time with her. Earth encompasses more than the planetary orb which you inhabit. The earthly realm is your own mother. You are her child and in death, she enfolds you," says Malcolm. "Mortals undergo a subtle but fundamental change when they enter Faerie. You now harbor elements from both realms. That's why old wives' tales caution their children not to eat or drink things of another world."

"Can I still go back? Is it possible?" asks Gil.

"It will be difficult for you to come home after leaving the first time," warns Malcolm. 

"That wasn't my choice," says Gil.

"Were you prepared to die for your shield?" retorts Malcolm.

"Well, yeah. You have to be for the job," says Gil.

"Then you were prepared," says Malcolm. "When you go back to your mother after leaving home, she welcomes you once more."

"Right," says Gil. He listens rather than wag his tongue. Affection blooms in Malcolm's heart.

"Imagine that you leave your mother again. You sever your remaining ties. How do you find your way back without any connection," says Malcolm.

Gil nods solemnly. "Got it. No such thing as a third chance."

"You're doing very well," says Malcolm. Gil pores over the book while Malcolm reads him.

"How come you guys can come and go?" asks Gil.

"Anyone born to Faerie never leaves," says Malcolm. "She's more jealous of her own than mother earth."

"Okay, I don't got it," says Gil, scritching his goatee. "You were in the East River. You pulled me up. Put your lips on me and everything. You obviously left fairy land."

"I didn't," insists Malcolm.

"You're in two places then?" When Malcolm graciously corrects him, Gil's head hangs down, face thumping the book. "How, damn it? How are you and your pops on earth without leaving fairy land."

"Magic," purrs Malcolm. He squawks when Gil throws the book at him.

Charles and Simone convince Malcolm to bring Gil for libations at their preferred watering hole. It gives Gil a chance to speak with the only woman he knows in Faerie.

“You know what would go real good with drinks?” Gil says to Tanaka.

“If you say bar peanuts, I will only accept peanuts roasted in their shells. Once you almost lose a sandal to the bathroom floor, you no longer believe that anyone washes their hands after missing the toilet,” says Tanaka. 

“Roasted peanuts. I do miss them. Damn,” says Gil.

“My bad, Arroyo. What do you miss?” says Tanaka.

“This dim sum place in Flushing,” begins Gil.

“Dumplings at Asian Jewels! Holy beef balls, Batman,” bemoans Tanaka. If Malcolm suspected the human woman of harboring romantic attraction to Gil, their conversation assuages his worries. Their lighthearted chatter dissolves into a deathly hush when a gentleman elf strikes a druid. When the druid lowers his cowl, blood from his swarthy and pocked cheek trickles from a sunstone gem set in the elf’s black ring.

“First blow wins,” challenges the elf.

“Besides the one I landed on your pride,” retorts the druid.

They duel within the establishment. Codes of honor keep their fight hemmed in, away from the translucent softly lit crystal walls and hotsprings where merfolk can curl up. Patrons take their cups and plates to the walls and corners. 

The elf maneuvers well despite his slim and stiffly embroidered tunic, graceful like a heron, swift as falcons. Mortal onlookers can only track the elf by his silver braid. The elf does not draw his sword, merely flexing his long fingers glistening with black rings forged to rend flesh like dragon claws.

Lengthy vines spring forth from the druid’s robe sleeves, barbed coils cutting the air and snapping thorns a hairsbreadth from the elf’s fair cheek, to mirror the insult done to the druid.

“Hah!” cries the elf. He bows mockingly and rakes at the druid’s belly to inflict a cruel wound. His mouth gapes in horror as the druid makes it rain silver. The elf clutches the crown of his head, but it’s too late. The druid divests the elf of his crowning glory. The elf’s silver braid hangs like a frayed noose from the suspended candelabra lamp crafted with bioluminescent fungi and white crystals. The elf stumbles when the druid smacks two harmless but loud pats on his beautiful cheek.

A goodly number of merfolk and water dwelling fae crowd around the druid. Though the elf possesses finer skills, the druid wins both a battle of wits and an honor duel. Malcolm offers his congratulations before he spies Gil’s dark head of hair and his tan face. Gil sidesteps the well wishers bunched around the duelists. For all that the elf is fleet of foot, he is jostled by raucous jibes and pinching and elbows ribbing. 

The merriment runs cold when the druid sinks beneath the shoulders of his admirers. A maiden shrieks “He’s dead! By Muirenn’s crown, he is dead!”

They lay out the druid’s body on the table and cut away his robes. Water runs from a deep and narrow hole in his stomach, followed by a rivulet of red blood that turns into ashen sludge.

A woman with long teal tresses and a lily pad headdress holds up raggedy fabric from the druid’s robes. She bunches the fabric around a dirk blade streaked with black lines and tarnished by murder.

“The man did it! He cut a fae with iron,” denounces the elf. “Who else but a mortal could wield iron bare handed?”

“Poisoner!”

“Hang him!”

“Tie him up and throw him out to sea.”

“Press him with stones and the truth will out!”

“Why would I kill someone I don’t know? I never met the guy,” Gil attempts to reason. Malcolm cannot protect Gil from the crowd. 

Tanaka examines the wounded corpse. “There’s no way he killed the druid. This puncture has a narrow entry point. Iron is toxic to your kind, but the blade? Too wide to penetrate without leaving an incision greater than a half inch. One side of the wound is smooth and concave while the other side is ragged and protruding externally. The edges are irregular and inconsistent with knife wounds. I’d say a hook.”

Tanaka grabs the dirk by the blade, mouth pulled back in outrage as she waggles it over her head for all to see. “It’s not even sharp!” She is snapped up by her lovers as accusations fly of her own involvement in the sordid affair. Malcolm is amazed by how much trouble two humans can find in the custody of responsible immortals.

“Confound your logic!” 

“It takes a human!”

“The individual who kills without honor is the one who duels without honor. He possesses stealth. He has a motive,” says Malcolm. “The mortal woman suggested a hook, but the means lies in the crook of his fingers.”

Malcolm smiles for onlookers, gesturing to the feral bent rings worn by the elf. “Give my compliments to your jeweler. I’ve never seen their like.”

“How worthy is your opinion, boy? You consort with men,” sneers the elf.

Malcolm does not seek the limelight, but the occasion calls for judicious use of his status as the son of Lady Jessica. Especially with Gil beaten down by strangers’ fists and forced to kneel.

“My, my. Son of a lady and her lord,” says the elf, feigning deference. “You are in the presence of none other than Kieran of Feabhail, son of The Right Honorable Baron Niall.”

Feabhail maintains an army in service to Muirenn Peucag, Queen of the Waterfalls, and her consort Máel Toile. Malcolm ruminates on Kieran’s placement under his mother’s house. The Right Honorable Baroness Sinead of Feabhail has three daughters with whom he attended dance lessons. Then Malcolm realizes that Kieran did not name the Baroness of Feabhail as his mother because he is an illegitimate.

Bastard though he may be, Kieran invokes the name of his baron father and points the iron blade at Gil. Once more Gil becomes a prisoner on the Far Blue Isle. Gil narrowly avoids shackles anchored to the confines of a sea-cave. Instead, Gil is jailed in a cell perpetually flooded with two inches of stinking water. When Gil is before Lady Jessica, he looks like something the catfish dragged in.

“On the twelfth night of Aibreán, the mortal known as Sergeant Arroyo is banished to earth. You are no longer under the hospitable auspices of my clan’s estate. We wash our hands of you,” declares Lady Jessica.

Malcolm disguises himself as an ordinary naiad with subtle glamour. A short and tight dress displays his legs covered by netting. His hair lightens to the shade of pale yellow sands, brows fading into a cool gray. He embeds beads of white quartz along his brow hairs for a decorative touch and to sustain the illusory spell.

“Kid?” reacts Gil when his eyes level with Malcolm’s. He clutches at the porous, brittle, and hopelessly reinforced bars of his jail, seemingly unaffected by the sea nettles scraping his grimy hands.

“You are mistaken, mortal. I’m Bright, a naiad maiden. You stole my heart away before breaking it open like an oyster,” says Malcolm. “When you got yourself banished from my kingdom.”

“It’s gonna work out, kid. I’m going back. It’s what I wanted,” says Gil.

“Yes and no,” replies Malcolm. “You’ll be robbed of your senses, maddened and naked and most likely dumped on the shores of a country far from your own.”

“How is any of this right?!" says Gil. "I didn't kill that guy. I didn't want to be here in the first place. I was mindin' my business gettin' shot at!"

“I’m afraid that the memory of the Fae is as long lived. Once upon a time, my mother and father’s families called earth their own. Many remember the abusive treatment which our kind suffered. This could well be the end for you,” says Malcolm.

“You sayin’ your farewells?” says Gil. He chuckles, covering his face as his shoulders twitch. “I must be crazy. So long and thanks for all the fish.”

“You may remain in your current holdings if you wish. Or you may come with me and let me give you a better send off than what my people intend,” says Malcolm.

“No offense, Bright. But what the hell can you possibly have under your sleeves?” asks Gil dubiously. “You don’t even have sleeves.” His eyes flick up and down Malcolm’s tight garb.

“You’ll want to stand back,” warns Malcolm. He picks the quartz from his brows and sets them on the bars of Gil’s jail cell. The quartz crystals snap the bars of Gil’s cell as they grow in volume, depleting the minerals of the holding bars. Malcolm extends his hand, glittering purple fingernails undulating as he beckons to the man. Gil steps over a row of quartz formations, dazed as though he were dreaming. Arm in arm, they stroll by guards who are floating in slumber.

Malcolm brings him to a heavily forested mountainside. Gil travels slowly, his weakened body more strained by the inclines. Their destination is a crystal blue mountain pool unruffled by the winds which shake the boughs of rowan. In spite of the serene location, Gil’s arms display goosebumps. Malcolm surmises that Gil has lived in Faerie long enough to sense power.

“Can you really take me across?” asks Gil. “Why didn’t you before??” Gil's bitterly pent up emotions are aimed at Malcolm. 

“I never traveled alone,” says Malcolm. “Do you wish to know what horrors befall anyone who becomes unmoored in-between?”

“Could that happen to me?” says Gil. He gazes at their reflection in the pool, eyes unable to see the bottom of it despite its small circumference. "Pond goes that deep for us, huh?"

“You might lose your life in the migration process,” says Malcolm. “I cannot leave Faerie as you do. She would know that I wouldn’t come back.”

“Why would you want to stay?” says Gil.

“Mortals are obtuse creatures, but you are not that stupid,” says Malcolm. His tone is icy. He strips off the dress and enters the pool nude. He instructs Gil to do likewise. Respect for Gil returns when the man does what he is told. Gil immodestly shucks the fabric woven by merfolk without turning around.

Malcolm sinks into the water without a splash as its power reverts him to his true form. His fins wave around in the pool, but the surface of it remains tranquil.

Gil doesn’t immediately wade in, however.

“I love my wife,” he says. “I was always going to find my way to her.”

“I’m aware. The moment when you purposed yourself to return to the mortal realm, you ceased drinking in excess. Each day, your wits sharpened. As did the strength of your will. I’ve known how to assist you for some time now. I was waiting.” 

“For what?”

“For you to change. That’s what makes your kind so different from mine. I thought you might learn to love my world. Or at least habituate yourself to its ebbs and flows, such that the risks of re-entry into the earthly realm might dissuade you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” says Gil. He delves into the water and stares down Malcolm.

“It’s unfortunate that my father did not wait a bit longer to machinate your downfall. A window of time closer to Bealtaine would’ve worked to your advantage,” says Malcolm. “The timing would have enhanced my spell work.”

“Your father had something to do with my life going to shit. What a surprise,” says Gil.

“The elf Kieran presumes a connection to a noble clan name, but he is without merit, influence, or treasure. Yet he is living very well. For now anyway. In time, he will gamble away his good fortune,” says Malcolm. 

“You think it was a frame job?” says Gil. “Your father went through all that trouble for little ol’ me?”

“I have no proof that Kieran is not merely the recipient of lucky happenstance. If my father is his benefactor, my mother the Lady Jessica would side with her own,” says Malcolm. He lowers his eyes. “I can only relinquish you. I ought to have done so before you suffered.”

Gil’s hand once more, for the last time, rests on the back of Malcolm’s neck.

“I knew you were good,” says Gil. He unbuckles his watch and offers it to Malcolm, who accepts the token of thanks.

“I wish to give you something in return. Will you accept it?” says Malcolm.

“Of course I would,” says Gil. “Whatchu got for me?”

Malcolm clasps his hands together. Gil gazes into his eyes, jaw slackened and eyes unfocused, as he is mesmerized by Malcolm’s spell. A tear drips from Malcolm’s lash. Gil cradles Malcolm’s jaw and catches the droplet in his palm. Before Gil can blink, a lone pearl sits in the creases between his fingers. The pearl is white with a blue sheen.

“You can’t give me something like this. I’ll be a dummy and drop it in the streets or down the sink.”

“It’s yours. It will stay with you,” says Malcolm. His eyes dim, their tireless luster dulled by the imminent pain of eternal parting.

“Thanks, kid. This is really something,” says Gil.

“I’m not kid. My name is Malcolm Eibhlín Whitly Milton of Alsoth Goirtonn.” Malcolm enjoys the shock which plays across Gil’s face. That Malcolm would intimate his real name, the core of his identity.

“Think I prefer Bright,” says Gil.

A delighted laugh spills from Malcolm’s lips before Gil kisses him. Malcolm greedily drinks up the warmth of Gil’s skin, smooth against the hairs speckling his own chest. Gil’s hands encircle Malcolm’s hips and pull him closer. Gil’s toes curl against the scales of his fin. Malcolm understands then how merfolk become addicted to human flesh, how it feels, how it tastes, how it loves.

“Farewell, Gil Arroyo,” says Malcolm. He pulls Gil’s hair until they’re both under. Their entwined hands sink into the crystal pool, fingers laced, before going deeper together.


	4. Gil - Return to Faerie

Joggers spot him floating naked and unconscious down the East River. The doctors tell Jackie that Gil suffered amnesia likely brought on by the cold shock of water. They can’t explain the scars or what became of Gil three years after his date of death.

All that Gil can say without lying his ass off is “I was in the water.” He was gone three years. He can't imagine the reverse, if it were him mourning Jackie for three years and counting.

In his absence, Jackie sold the house and stayed in a motel after many tumultuous months of living with her mother. The Le Mans quietly rusts in the motel lot which truly breaks Gil’s heart. Jackie didn’t fix it right away when it first stalled. Gil calls up his mechanic buddy, rolls up his sleeves, and they get to work restoring the engine. Gil can’t afford to pay his friend for exhaustive services, but his buddy gives him space and lends him tools for the fixer upper.

In order to work in homicide again, Gil agrees to take a demotion and fill a vacancy. He shares a desk with Detective Powell. But with him getting paid again, Gil can move Jackie into a safe and clean apartment.

“We’ll get another house eventually,” he tells her.

“I don’t think we should,” says Jackie. “It’s just going to be the two of us.” Her teasing doesn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe you’d prefer a beach house. You can have sushi and caviar every day.”

“Babe, I’m here to stay. Fuck the sushi,” says Gil. She knows about his missing time; he loves her so much for believing him. She’s the only one who would.

“I’m sure you got used to sleeping with the fishes,” says Jackie.

“I’m sorry that I kissed a mermaid,” says Gil. “He threw me back. His family probably gave him hell after jail breaking me. I wouldn’t be here with you if not for him.”

“I know, babe. I need to get my head around some things. Are you sure you didn’t fuck a mermaid prince?” says Jackie. She pointedly cleans a knife.

“First off, he wasn’t a prince. He was like a young lord. How come you can accept mermaids and magic kingdom but you don’t think your man can keep it in his pants?” demands Gil.

“Because if it were me, I would fuck a mermaid prince,” says Jackie. “If you did get some tail, you’re better off telling me how it went down.”

Gil laughs and he interrupts their dish washing to pick up Jackie and spin her around.

“Put me down, you lunatic! I’m holding a fricken knife,” cries Jackie. She tosses it into the sink.

“I love you, Jackie. Coming back was worth it just for you,” says Gil. Jackie strokes his face and kisses him. Her tears briefly make him yearn for waters that are blue like Malcolm’s eyes. When Gil sleeps that night, he rolls a pearl between his fingertips. He keeps it closer to him than the rabbit foot on his keys.

Jackie and Gil are thinking about getting a puppy when police recover the first body of a Hispanic male between 30-40 in age. The vic is about 5’ 10” with black hair and a beard. The man is stripped, drowned, and left in plain sight.

Gil makes notes about the letters jaggedly carved into the unidentified victim. “Give it back,” he reads.

“You think somebody’s trying to send a message, Powell?” says Gil.

Detective Powell looks at him like he’s crazy. “What message?”

“The words,” says Gil. He points at the scarlet letters plain as day. “Give it back.”

“Did you skip coffee this morning?” says Powell. Her lips thin and she crosses her arms. “This guy was mauled. All I’m getting is ground beef. How are you making out words, partner?”

When the medical examiner fails to note the message carved into the Hispanic male’s chest, Gil breaks into a cold sweat over the autopsy. He shows a photo of the man’s chest to Jackie.

“Ew,” says Jackie. “I’m not seeing it. What does it mean, Gil?”

Gil reads the writing before tucking it out of sight. “We need a vacation. Let’s skip the beach this summer,” he says. “How you feel about poolside, babe?”

“I’ve still got my bikini,” says Jackie.

“That little white number?” says Gil. He drools a little as he pictures Jackie in her string bikini and her funky stone necklaces.

When two more Hispanic men between their 30s and 40s are similarly found waterlogged with writing that only Gil can see, he concludes that he is in deep shit. The third vic is a Brooklyn cop. The only explanation that sticks is that he is still under Malcolm’s spell to read fairy language. He can’t share his suspicions with his partner, never mind his lieutenant.

He steals one of Jackie’s rocks and ties a plastic ziploc bag around it. Inside the ziploc bag is the pearl which Malcolm gave him. “I’m sorry, kid. I thought I would keep it, but if your folks want it back this bad, they can have it.” Gil crosses his finger and squeezes his rabbit foot before he flings the pearl from Hell Gate bridge.

A downtown cop turns up mauled and drowned, as suddenly as the pearl in Gil’s pocket.

“Babe, I think we need to get lost,” says Jackie. She stops him from flushing the pearl down the toilet. “We’re gonna lose the deposit, but we have enough to get a U-Haul and drive to the middle of nowhere.”

“We would have nothing, Jackie. I didn’t want this for you,” says Gil.

“Shut up and help me pack up,” says Jackie. She picks up a shelf mounted on the wall and slides her rocks into a large rubber container.

What Jackie says is not what Gil does. This time he does a full on stakeout in a work vehicle, on an abandoned ramp left to the weeds when the city suspended a construction project indefinitely. He leaves the Le Mans at home to avoid tipping off Jackie. She thinks he wouldn’t go anywhere without it.

When Gil spots movement in the East River, not far from Hell Gate, he goes out to meet the water. Or rather, the creepy fuckers lurking in the currents. He parks the work vehicle, nothing in his pockets but his wallet, his keys, and his handgun.

Gil recognizes the toadie who hangs around Malcolm’s father. John, he remembers. He knows John by the long unkempt beard and the oily gray hair which worsen the appearance of his heavy jaw. John has several mercenaries with him, brandishing forked weapons.

“Nice of you to give yourself up,” says John. “This time they’re putting you in a sea-cave.”

“For what crime, this time?” retorts Gil. “I didn’t kill anyone. Yet. Ask Malcolm.”

“Malcolm is indisposed,” says John. ‘Like you don’t already know.”

“What did you do to him?” demands Gil. He aims his gun at John.

“We found him floating belly down in the portal. He’s not in good shape. You stole from him,” says John.

“I didn’t. Take me to him,” says Gil. “This has all been a big misunderstanding.”

“I’m not here for you,” laughs John. “It’ll be easy enough for me to find it off your dead body.” The armed merfolk close in on Gil who fires off his gun to no avail.

It turns out that Gil isn’t alone either. He recognizes the revving of a Pontiac engine, a clicking undertone that distinguishes his ride from the cars of other mortals. Like a shadowed chariot, his Le Mans peels down the ramp and runs over assorted people of magic. They’re not dead, they’re left twitching in the Le Mans’ dust, covered with tire tracks.

“Get in, fool!” screams Jackie. She looks pissed enough to steam roll his ass. Gil jumps in, barely keeps his toes. He winces from how his wife manhandles the transmission. His wife and his car are both mad at him, from the sounds of it.

“Babe, the clutch,” implores Gil.

Before Jackie can shift gears, the Le Mans careens in a direction that Gil prays is Brooklyn. In the darkness of night, Gil recognizes a lone merman who stands in their path with unyielding confidence. Lord Martin of the Far Blue Isle is unfazed by the headlights approaching him at 60 miles per hour. The Le Mans drifts off the road but not in a rational way. Jackie and Gil hover with the tires spinning. Gil’s head smashes the dash when their car drops into the river. Jackie is trapped by her seat belt.

Gil maintains a death grip on Jackie’s hands even as his head feels like it’s split open. His temple is dripping before the water level rises to his chest.

“Babe, get out. It’s no good,” says Jackie, panting out her last. She’s shorter than him. She tips her head up as the water splashes her chin and sloshes into her nostrils. 

“Fuck off, I love you.”

The water covers her ears and Gil isn’t sure that she hears his elegant declaration of love. Gil clings to Jackie more tightly and bobs his head under. He kisses her for the last time, one more for the road. As they’ve done at least a thousand times already, they breathe as one for what feels like forever. Gil is blinded by a blue glow.

Too soon, Gil is lashed to the fetid wall of a sea cave. He hears the tortured cries of mortals who belong to John. None of them sound like Jackie. He hates to admit it, but he is grateful that John incidentally mentions Jackie’s survival.

“Martin is patching her up. While she’s healing up, your wife isn’t getting any special treatment just yet,” taunts John.

Gil is told nothing until he is salvaged from the swirling darkness of the sea cave and thrown into the High Court in the presence of the elven Queen Muirenn Peucag, ruler of Tír fo Thuinn (Land Under the Waves), and her consort Máel Toile.

He thinks he’s inside a forest but realizes that each tree is uniformly the same size and that their leaves form into golden domes. What Gil mistakes for a meadow brook is the seemingly endless train extending from the gown of Queen Muirenn. Instead of the standard royal crown, Queen Muirenn’s imperial power arches in a splendorous array of colorful lights upon her radiant hair.

Lady Jessica and her lord request their queen’s help in restoring their son to full health and punishing the mortal responsible. Gil is accused of stealing Malcolm’s immortality. His denials fall stillborn when Lady Jessica summons her attendants. They bring forth Malcolm supine within a crystal casket. Malcolm’s lush brown hair is grown to his shoulders and a goatee juts from his chin. Gil recognizes the shape of his nose and the set of his penciled lashes.

Remorse pangs his heart that Malcolm can’t open his stunning eyes. Gil almost craps himself when the fae queen fixes her gaze to him. She scrutinizes his vulnerable thoughts.

“I didn’t hurt Malcolm. He helped me,” says Gil. “I wouldn’t have been able to leave without his help.”

“He surely did. But then you turned on him and you took more from him than he was willing. Your greedy actions cursed him into unwilling sleep,” accuses the fae queen.

“If you mean that I stole his pearl, you’re all wrong. He gave it to me,” urges Gil, blood pounding in his ears and fists clinking the chain of his shackles.

“If this is true, then wake him,” challenges the fae queen.

“Give me my wife,” says Gil. He has no idea how to wake up Malcolm. “Before I help any mermaids, I want to see with my own eyes that she isn’t hurt or been messed with.”

The fae queen keeps Gil quartered in a dry prison cell while Lady Jessica and Lord Martin await the arrival of Gil’s wife. His shackles chafe his bloodied wrists when he sees Jackie. A red blossom sets off her wavy black hair which has been styled and braided with loose curls gracing her neck and her temples. Silver hoops dangle from her ears. She wears a pearly white gown.

“Is this she?” inquires the fae queen. “You are all bound by oath. No trickery.”

“You can bet your bottom dollar, Queen,” says Jackie. She continues on proudly. “That man is my husband. He didn’t do nothing. He a cop, for crap’s sake. One of the best.”

Jackie is silenced, but Gil’s knees are water because she is not an illusion. Who else would step up and bat for him in the High Court of a fae queen?

“Get on with it,” commands the fae queen. “Wake the lad.”

Gil rifles through his clothes until his fingers pinch around the pearl. He puts it in Malcolm’s cool hand. His face goes red when Malcolm’s hand slides limply and the pearl rolls into the casket. Gil’s face goes to Jackie. Her hands flail as though she’s watching baseball on their TV, her mouth puckering in a phrase which Gil knows all too well: “What thee fuck are you doing?” Jackie pantomimes people talking before squishing her nails together.

He is an idiot. Gil leans over the casket and kisses Malcolm. He almost falls into the casket when Malcolm drags him down, returning the kiss like Gil’s got a monopoly on all the breathing air in Faerie.

“What fools these fairies be,” says the Fae Queen. “The son of Lady Jessica is joined to the accused man. We anticipate your wedding nuptials. It shall be a lavish affair and perhaps I will not recall this incident of your clan squandering my time.” She kicks them out of her court; their party returns to the Far Blue Isle.

Gil makes love to Jackie, to reassure her that she belongs to him in this world and the next. Lady Jessica keeps Malcolm busy with the wedding planning.

“What on earth possessed you to give your heart to a mortal?!” says Lady Jessica. She calls them into her study warded from eavesdroppers and spies. Malcolm stands while Gil and Jackie are benched.

“Oops?” says Malcolm. “I wanted to give him something that wouldn’t break when Gil departed our world. Mortals aren’t able to bear a stitch of clothing in their travels. I didn’t realize that maintaining the connection out of bounds would drain me.”

“You are matched in folly, if nothing else,” says Lady Jessica.

“You’re telling me, lady. I gave my husband a talisman, right? A rabbit foot to protect his ass. He leaves it in his car and then falls off the bridge into your world,” says Jackie. “And you wanna know why he left it in the car?”

“For what reason would a man part with his protections? If it means life and limb?” inquires Lady Jessica.

“So that nuttin’ would happen to his ride! Men!” exclaims Jackie.

“You should have heeded your wife,” says Lady Jessica. As if Gil doesn’t hear about it enough.

Lady Jessica and Lord Martin have no choice but to host a ceremony for Malcolm and the human to whom he bonded himself. Gil mistakenly believes that everything worked out. Martin makes his move before Malcolm and Gil finish their dance. Jackie is escorted from the banquet.

“Be at ease, son,” says Martin. “Your place is beside your husband. The mortal woman, however, has no such ties. I’m afraid her revels with us draw to a close.”

“If that were the case, you should’ve thrown me back when you couldn’t torture me to death!” yells Gil.

“Father, you are ruining my wedding,” says Malcolm. He is gorgeous in a tunic that gleams like sunlight over an ocean. His hair falls long and brown over his shoulders. He keeps a beard like his human husband. “If this is your will, then allow us to give our well wishes to Mrs. Arroyo and do what we may to ease her journey.”

Malcolm arranges for a carriage with only Gil and Jackie allowed inside. He rides alongside their carriage on a sea serpent. They travel to the crystal pool where Martin plans to cast away Jackie. The carriage movements, or perhaps her emotions, cause Jackie to vomit.

“I’m going to kill a merman bitch,” says Gil. He rubs her back. “Stick him with iron and then he’ll be sorry.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” says Jackie. “We’ll be okay.”

“We are not going to be okay!” shouts Gil.

Jackie rubs at her damp nose and shakes her head. Her hair falls out of its elaborate weave from smacking at merfolk and scratching their faces like a hellcat. “No, babe. You and I won’t ever see each other again.”

Her mouth opens as she swabs under her eyes, delicate with make-up. “I’m pregnant. I was going to tell you on our honeymoon with Malcolm. I can’t lose my shit with our baby on the way.”

“No,” says Gil. “Why now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s something in the water,” says Jackie.

“Is everything okay? Does Mrs. Arroyo need healing to soothe her stomach?” asks Malcolm once he’s anchored his sea serpent.

“She’s sick from our baby,” says Gil. “Malcolm, you have to do something. I’m begging you. Please. I can’t lose them both!” He grabs Malcolm’s tunic.

“I can’t do for her what I’ve done for you. Nor can you return thrice,” says Malcolm. His pearl gleams on a gold chain around Gil’s neck.

“Damn it, no!” shouts Gil. He falls to his knees and buries his face into Jackie’s stomach. Jackie’s fingers shakily comb Gil’s hair. Her fingernails are opalescent and beaded with miniature white seashells.

“Gil, you must control yourself,” says Malcolm. He gets on one bended knee. “Your wife needs you. Once your child is born, I may be able to grant your family’s passage into this world. With Jackie’s blessings, if she so chooses. You may yet embrace your child, if you are patient.”

“I don’t understand,” says Gil. “She and I tried for years.”

“I had medical issues which junked up the works,” says Jackie.

“That might be my father’s doing,” says Malcolm.

“Are you saying,” Gil begins dangerously, “that your father touched my wife?”

“Oh, hell no,” denies Jackie.

“Most certainly not! No realm would safeguard him from Lady Jessica’s scorn,” says Malcolm. “What I mean is that Lord Martin is one of the best healers in our kingdom. Besides any injuries which Jackie suffered from my father and his assailants in your abduction, he would’ve corrected any disease states.”

“Your father… fixed me? What is his problem?!” hisses Jackie.

“It’s mine,” says Gil. He is at once exultant and adrift in his misery when Jackie holds him.

Malcolm drops back with deference as Jackie and Gil stand in the crystal pool sheltered by the rowan trees. Jackie shucks her silk slip inside the water. The long navy gown she wore is discarded beneath a rowan, the silver embroidered bodice sitting in a heap. She crouches down to her neck, her arms crossed. An onyx pendant edged with silver filigree sinks between the generous valley of her naked breasts.

Lord Martin and his retinue join them. He smiles despite the unwelcome faces turned his way.

“We are going to be okay,” says Jackie. Gil understands then that she means it for herself and their child. “Will you look out after yourself, Babe?”

“Yeah,” he says. Because boobs.

“Gil Arroyo,” says Jackie, her eyes narrowed, voice lowered so that no pointy ears detect Gil’s name.

“Fine. I promise,” mutters Gil. He’ll have to think up another plan besides living inside a fortified wine cellar and plotting the murder of his father-in-law.

Lord Martin speaks an incantation to activate the portal. Not a ripple disturbs the surface. The corners of his mouth sink lower, but he maintains his genial demeanor.

“Mr. Arroyo, if you would be so kind as to step out of the water?” says Martin. He smooths his long beard which is beaded with finely etched bands of precious metal.

Malcolm intercedes before Gil starts swinging fists. His hand smoothly catches Gil’s fist and he lifts Gil from the water.

Lord Martin once again invokes the power required to traverse dimensions. The crystal pool reflects his aggravated expression. His black pearl slipper prods the enchanted water. “This normally works.”

“Babe,” says Gil, hope blooming into happiness as Martin circles the pool muttering to no effect. “Didn’t you go missing for a few days when you were a brat?”

“Yeah, what’s it to you?” retorts Jackie.

“What kinda place could you disappear into where you lose track of time?” asks Gil.

“I told you I was playing with kids,” says Jackie.

“Were they children or were they little people?” interrupts Malcolm.

“Both? They played and played and I couldn’t keep up,” says Jackie. “No grown ups could jump around like they was flying.”

“Jackie Halliwell Arroyo,” says Gil. “Is this your first time to fairy land?”

“No,” she blurts. Her jaw drops. “Did you just make me…??”

“The ability is mutual. You are also able to compel your husband to speak truth,” says Malcolm.

“Yeah, don’t tell anyone your name in these parts,” says Gil. He grins at her. “Not if you’re stuck here with us.”

Jackie’s lip tucks between her teeth. “I guess the honeymoon is still on, fellas.” Malcolm and Gil’s eyes are drawn to the curves of her nude body swelling from the radiant pool.

Gil’s new plan for revenge on Malcolm’s father... is to live happily ever after. Him, Jackie, Malcolm, their babies, and whatever the hell kind of bird that [Sunshine](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7babd3a2ccc9903468b7c3f634b10115/ac801502bdc4bab4-1b/s540x810/46b0537f95fbee017b780cfcfa1ffe5952a56a37.jpg) is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: What happened with the murdered druid? As far as Fae law is concerned, the murder was investigated and the murderer (Gil) was prosecuted, albeit falsely. When a murderer escapes their sentence, it becomes a matter to be taken up by the druid’s kinsmen in a personal vendetta. The druid’s body was disposed of when no one named him. Luckily for Gil, no one pursues the vendetta. But if the druid’s kinsmen were out for Gil’s blood, Malcolm would likely instigate a trial by combat. Malcolm would argue that Gil was Banished and did go to earth. But then Malcolm would have to draw his weapon and defend his argument. Were Malcolm to lose, Gil would be given to the kinsmen for a vengeance kill, lifelong servitude, become a tithe for hell, or perhaps the kinsmen would sell Gil back to Malcolm. Who can tell with fairies?


	5. Happy Happy Joy Joys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped to the last chapter for mermaid smut: Gil and Jackie married on earth. Jackie is a couple months preggers. Mermaid Malcolm and Gil are married in Faerie. Jackie and Malcolm share Gil.

Malcolm secures them a cottage on the outskirts of island forestry which is a leisurely stroll to a rocky shore. Unbeknownst to his mortal spouse and their bewitching lady, he arranges for bodyguards to establish a discreet but effective perimeter to watch the forest paths and the shoreline. Malcolm plans to be distracted to no end.

Jackie frolics on the beach. A large woven basket drifts at her heels as she bends over and tosses in various multicolored stones for her rock garden at the palace.

“Perhaps next time I shall fetch a cart,” says Malcolm. The charm will hold the basket but the bottom of the basket may snap from the weight of the combined stones.

“I’m not dragging that shit,” says Gil, chuckling. They both recline on a canopy lounge keeping them out of the sand. He reaches for the fruit in their picnic hamper. When he catches Malcolm’s hungry expression, he puts the berry between his lips and shifts his weight. Malcolm rolls into Gil, swooping in for a taste of stolen fruit. Gil bites down on the berry and Malcolm protests softly because it gets into his patchy beard. Gil’s tongue laps at the fresh rivulet of sweet juices on Malcolm’s lips before hushing his objections with a bruising kiss. His tanned legs pin down the spread of Malcolm’s thighs peeking from Malcolm’s thin and flowy silk skirt.

While Malcolm prefers his underwater form for sport and exhaustive activities, he loves how Gil’s fingertips stroke the back of his knees, the heel of his feet, pressing the arches until Malcolm is in danger of premature release. Prior to Gil, Malcolm’s imagination had been limited to walking on legs like mortals. When Gil squeezes his thigh, Malcolm wrestles with him until he straddles Gil with his legs, limbered from amorous evenings and debaucherous mornings.

With a gleeful laugh, Malcolm eats a berry and licks his lips smugly down at Gil. Gil’s hands rub down his chest, pinching his nipples when Malcolm bites into another berry. Malcolm’s hips jerk and Gil clasps Malcolm tightly as he thrusts upwards, grinding the bulge in his cloth bottoms into Malcolm. When Gil sees how excited Malcolm gets, Gil’s hand sidles into the loose slit where Malcolm’s silk skirt opens. Malcolm throws his head back in ecstasy, long brown hair brushing his lower back. He swallows a moan sweetened by fruit.

“I got an idea, baby. You can have all the berries if you let me eat you out,” says Gil.

“Do you mean, by sucking on my cock?” asks Malcolm, hesitating as he mentally checks his understanding of human idioms. He shivers all over as Gil’s thumb circles and presses the tip of his engorged flesh. Novelty heightens the frisson of pleasure.

“Sit on my face,” says Gil.

Malcolm makes a surprised noise when Gil lifts him to his knees and Gil slides lower beneath him. He is then bent into a squat from Gil’s strength. Malcolms fingernails scratch deep grooves into the cushion as Gil spreads his buttocks and licks him. The only experience which Malcolm has to compare with is when he swims too close to a hydrothermal vent and the heat warms the dorsal swell nearest his sacral regions.

Before he can think any further on it, Gil’s arms clamp over the joints of his pelvis, forcing Malcolm to seat his weight firmly over Gil’s mouth. Gil’s beard roughs against the sensitive skin between his genitals and his anus. His tongue picks up pressure and gains pace the more Malcolm squirms. Malcolm cups his cock before come surges onto his palm.

Gil tips Malcolm onto his side and offers him a berry. He is handsome, infuriatingly smug, and has far too many years of experience over Malcolm. Malcolm’s eyes are for Gil’s swelled length. Completely unbothered by his own erection, Gil teases Malcolm. “It’s good, Bright. Your sweet little ass earned it.”

Malcolm is by no means virginal. He’s tried many things down under, but clearly has not explored every practice under the sun. Malcolm tamps down his territorial instincts when Gil drops a berry, his gaze diverted. His first reaction is enraged jealousy over anything or anyone who seduces Gil’s attention.

Jackie pulls the straps of her dress off of her shoulders and steps out of the pooled fabric. Without her modern cut swimwear, she makes do with her natural charms. With her favorably sloped bust and vibrant wavy hair, Jackie is as beautiful as any maid of the deeps. Yet she wears proof of hardship among petty creatures. She bears an unfortunate ridge on her torso from a jealous lover's wound hastily sutured by men. Though not as severe, surgical punctures pock her navel and groin. A subtle off color line denotes an old scratch on her chest. Malcolm’s sharp appraisal is softened by Gil’s longing for Jackie which aches through their connection. Malcolm recognizes an opportunity for more sensual depths when Gil is enticed to enter the waters.

Malcolm reclines inside the waves, supple tail fin unfurled. Even swimming leisurely, Malcolm reaches Jackie first. She giggles when he bobs up from the waves and surprises her with a kiss. His pointed earlobes poke out of his lustrous brown hair. His ears move quick like the wind. Jackie's arms loop around his shoulders, grabbing his chestnut locks until his mouth plays along her décolletage.

“Are you naturally sensitive, or is it because of Gil’s baby?” His oceanic eyes don't blink.

Jackie squeezes her breasts until they’re spilling out of her hands. Malcolm’s mouth waters and he suckles her pink teats. Her leg wraps around him, fingers tangling in his hair. Malcolm teases her to regain Gil’s attention, but his hands reflexively grip the mounds of her ass. Malcolm drinks in the whimper rolling from Jackie's chapped lips when he rocks the gentle curve of his tail against her cunt, opening her like a seeded lotus bloom.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” says Gil when he catches up to them. “You think you can make my wife come?”

“With or without magic?” asks Malcolm. He licks the sea water running down Jackie’s throat.

“Hey, magic is cheating,” says Jackie. She smacks at Malcolm's shoulder when he and Gil share a long look. “Did I say that you could stop?”

“Hold your wife,” says Malcolm. He glides toward Gil and deposits Jackie into Gil’s arms. Then he disappears below the surface. Within moments, Jackie’s head butts into Gil’s chin, her bent knees and the tip of her toes kicking out. 

Gil warms her breasts, fondling her nipples, and whispers into her ear. “You do know that the kid doesn’t need to come up for air, right?”

“Mmmm,” Jackie mewls, her eyes watering and her neck bending like a wet reed. “Teeth.”

“Are the fish biting, babe?” jokes Gil.

“This one has long fingers,” says Jackie. Her eyes roll and her whole body shakes before a relieved smile washes over her face. Gil kisses her neck, his fingers curled under her chin.

When Malcolm surfaces, Jackie tells them to bring her to the sand. She laughs at their downcast faces. “Why so glum, chums? I want to see you two in action. But I can’t with all this water. I’ll get leg cramps.”

“You wish to watch us copulate in my true form?” asks Malcolm. He gawks at her as though he's never seen a woman before.

“Is that problematic?” says Gil.

“You are a brave man, Gil Arroyo.” Malcolm turns the unfiltered intensity of his inhuman gaze upon the mortal. “You’ve never heard the legends of sirens enticing sailors off of boats? The so called mermaids in your oceans are reputed to entrap men and drag them under for twisted ends.”

“You gonna screw me like that, Bright?” retorts Gil. “I stick it in you, would you take me deep and not let up?” 

“I would allow you to breathe,” says Malcolm.

“You best take care of our husband before he explodes,” says Jackie, orienting herself toward the sands. The waters buoy her on her back as she kicks off a breaststroke.

“How would we fit, Bright?” says Gil, persistent in his questioning nature.

“One yields to the other,” answers Malcolm. “Some things don’t change between species.”

Malcolm circles him, splashing Gil’s chest with his fin. He deliberately raises the broad fluke of his tail above the waves. He gives Gil a gentle reminder of their differences. The sunlight illuminates the membranous fluke tissue webbed by veins, warming his blood, and raising his body temperature. Jackie's passion nearly scorched his fingers and tongue and Malcolm shrewdly echoes her heat.

Gil extends his hand as they initiate a dance which transcends elements, ages, and biology. Malcolm’s long fingers flex delicately along the underside of Gil’s bronze arm. Though he dulled his fingernails in anticipation of love making with tender fleshed mortals, Malcolm emulates the soft tendrils of jellyfish. Apprehension tenses him, makes his tail fin flick, when Gil grabs Malcolm’s hand and brings it to his tanned face. Their differences are apparent in the more pronounced webbing between Malcolm’s elongated fingers and the stubs of Gil’s fingernails which are rosy with pale moons. He soothes Malcolm with a long look and presses his lips over black veins where humanoid skin emerges from small, fine, and opalescent scales. Gil’s trimmed beard tickles his wrist. 

“What are you scared of?” says Gil.

“I am not,” declares Malcolm. “You surprised me when I was concentrating. I’m ready now.”

“Show me what you mean,” says Gil.

Malcolm swims toward Jackie, but he chooses to settle himself where the beach is pebbled. The stones are smooth and round and warm as they mold to his shape. The water blankets the muscular swell of his tail and the large gills running diagonally on his abdomen before he relaxes into the tranquil flow. As much as he likes Jackie, he avoids sand rubbing between his scales. He waves to her.

Gil’s cloth bottoms wash up on the pebbles. The man himself negotiates the shifting pebbles underfoot, stooping to maintain his balance. He wears the pearl necklace. Malcolm catches Gil in his arms and Gil rewards him with a kiss.

“My knees cannot take another hit,” says Gil. His hands explore the obvious changes to Malcolm’s upper body. He squeezes Malcolm’s hands and pins them down before feeling the lightly scaled texture. He touches the skin around the enlarged gills running along oblique muscles, watching Malcolm’s reactions. 

“Baby, you feel hot. I can’t believe it,” says Gil. Malcolm’s hips roll when Gil smacks the thickest section of Malcolm’s tail. “Oh boy, is that good twitch or bad twitch?”

“It’s good. I promise you, it’s good,” says Malcolm, his throat working as he swallows. His lashes flutter when Gil slides a hand beneath his neck, mindful of the smaller breathing slits, and sucks the yielding skin on Malcolm’s throat. Gil’s weight clacks the pebbles. Gil’s lean legs and his cock warm up Malcolm’s aquamarine scales.

Water pools around Malcolm’s head and his hair billows like kelp. Gil tells him that he’s beautiful. Gil’s fingers briefly skim through the radiant cloud of Malcolm’s hair. And smacks him again while cradling his neck. He catches sight of Jackie sinking her fingers between her legs.

Malcolm’s palm slides down his groin, below where his hip bones merge with his tail, touching where scales imperceptibly give way to smooth flesh. His tail whips the water when Gil’s fingers press over his hand. Gil’s fingers stroke an indentation that runs horizontally. 

“Fuck, baby, is this your hole? Or should I just finish in your hot little mouth?” Gil’s lustful attention burns away Malcolm’s inhibitions. Gil lines up his fingertips, crooking them in unison, and wiggling them slowly. Then Gil moves inside him like a wave.

“Mount me,” pleads Malcolm.

He grabs Malcolm’s waist when the pebbles move under his shins. Gil’s cock hooks into him, sinking into Malcolm and the shallow tides. Gil’s arms move higher up Malcolm’s sides, crossing together beneath Malcolm’s upper back. He embraces Malcolm tightly. The insides of his knees press Malcolm’s tail and he trusts his full weight on top of Malcolm. His body smacks the water. Gil freezes when Malcolm’s fists press his lower back.

“You need me to hold still? Malcolm?” says Gil.

“Malcolm, he can stop if you change your mind,” says Jackie. “Right, babe?”

“Yeah,” says Gil, exhaling deeply. “Tell me if I’m hurting you.” Their beards brush when Gil pecks a quick kiss.

“Can you, um, move side to side?” says Malcolm. His smile takes on an embarrassed edge.

“Uh oh,” says Gil. “I’m giving you bad sex.”

Jackie’s laugh ripples over them. “Gil, get your shit together.”

“Trying, babe. I’m in deep here.” Gil sways, shifting his body weight left and right. He moans abruptly. His ass raises up and down, spine arching, as he slams forward. “Oh God, baby, that felt good on my dick. How do I make you tighten up for me?” Gil puts a hand between them and fingers the edges of Malcolm’s slit. Malcolm’s tail flexes side to side.

“Am I gettin’ any warmer, Malcolm?” asks Gil.

“Yes, Gil. I do feel closer. Stay inside me and I’ll move as I like.” Malcolm shudders and pulls him down for another kiss, slithering movements growing more urgent.

“Maybe it’s a mermaid thing,” says Jackie. She strokes Gil’s back. “You’re so nosy, you’ll find his sweet spots in no time.”

Malcolm breaks his kiss with Gil and laughs. Gil flashes Jackie a mildly betrayed expression.

“You mind if I borrow our husband, Malcolm? I only need his mouth,” says Jackie. “Watching you two is getting me all worked up.”

“Please. Have him as you like,” says Malcolm.

“What the hell. This fuck has already gone sideways. I might as well go sideways, too,” mutters Gil. He gets on his hands and knees before rotating toward Jackie, fitting the seam of his lips to her dripping cunt. Jackie kneels and she moves sinuously, shoving her husband’s face where she needs him. Then Gil is prostrating on his knees and one arm, thrusting his fingers until she’s riding the grind of his knuckles.

Gil’s hips once more begin pumping, sliding his dick into Malcolm submissively posed while bringing Jackie to orgasm. Gil and Jackie’s attention snap to Malcolm who suddenly loses his mind. Malcolm’s brows scrunch together, teeth bared, his upper body arching, gripping pebbles in his hands.

Gil growls into Jackie’s thigh. He bites down on her soft leg, marking her, while he thrusts frantically. Jackie twiddles her clit, water slapping her ass, when she comes on the sharp edge of Gil’s teeth.

“Fuck, it's tight. Keep poppin' for me,” mumbles Gil, fucking Malcolm sideways. He focuses on Jackie’s eyes, like she’s the only one who can bring him back to earth. “I love you, I love you…” He pounds Malcolm into colorful rocks like a possessed madman. His dick scrapes one end of Malcolm's tender slit. Gil curves his fingers inside Malcolm's tail and gapes his opening wider. His balls dip in. Malcolm's shriek is a siren call, spurring Gil deeper. 

Gil cusses the air blue as his thighs slap against the thick of Malcolm’s tail. The tide swells around Gil's arched back muscles. Sea water drips from Gil's hair, into his eyes, from his clenched jaw. He looks like a wild thing himself; bronze skin dominates jewel toned tail; coarse dark hairs conquer gleaming scales. Gil and Malcolm look like mates joined by water.

Salty water stings her bitten thigh. Jackie crawls over to Malcolm and claims his lips. His fingers thread her damp hair curled by sea salt. Malcolm is on the stones and she is nestled in sand, Gil splayed on top of them both. Gil loves on Jackie’s breast as Malcolm milks Gil's cock for more pearl. Jackie basks in afterglow with Gil moaning around her tit and Malcolm catching her eye, his pink lips flush against her nipple. She is doubly pinned; their beards rough her skin hotly as the cool waves lick between her legs. Sea foam crackles around their ears as they tangle like three cords, not easily broken.

Jackie reaches around Gil and touches Malcolm's belly, already sensing the shape of what's to come. Malcolm does likewise to her, admiring the changes waxing full. Gil embraces his family, kissing the tops of their heads, blissfully unaware that he will be twice a father in several moons.

Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deleted Scene:
> 
> Gil: Can I hug you?
> 
> It’s a delicate question when Malcolm’s breathing gills are along his rib lines.
> 
> Malcolm: I haven’t been choked before, Daddy.

**Author's Note:**

> Fin, the end of a tale. Splish splash bitches!
> 
> Many thanks to KateSamantha for beta and mermaid songs. And missneko for inspiring it all. =^_^=


End file.
